Abstract
BackgroundGlobal and national undergraduate medical education accreditation organizations recommend the inclusion of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) instructions into the medical schools’ curricula. Accordingly, some Turkish medical schools have individually developed and implemented EBM training programs, but there is no data of current programs’ effectiveness and students’ learning achievements due to the lack of a validated Turkish language EBM assessment tool.This study evaluates the effect of a newly introduced formal EBM instruction to the curriculum on students’ knowledge and skills by using the recently published Turkish adaptation of the Fresno Test.MethodsThe study is an experimental investigation using pre- and post-test evaluations. A five-week EBM course was developed according to Kern’s six-step curriculum development approach. A total of 78 students from the third (n = 30), fourth (n = 19) and fifth (n = 29) year of medical school voluntarily consented and were enrolled into the course. Overall, the Cerrahpaşa Medical Faculty had a total of 555, 461, and 400 students enrolled in the third, fourth, and fifth year, respectively.The program has been evaluated based on students’ learning achievements and survey responses.ResultsThe students’ mean pre-test Fresno Test score improved from 49.9 ± 18.2 to 118.9 ± 26.3 post-training. The Cohen’s effect size was 3.04 (95% CI, 2.6–3.5). The overall students’ satisfaction score was 8.66 ± 1.09 on a 1 to 10 scale.ConclusionsThe program was effective in improving students’ knowledge and skills on EBM. We propose to offer the program as an elective course during the third year of the medical school curriculum based on all data obtained during the program evaluation.
Highlights
Introduction toEvidence-Based Medicine (EBM) ▪ List the components of the PICO formula practice▪ Understand types of the PICO question▪ Formulating focused ▪ Formulate a focused clinical question clinical questions▪ Value using the most reliable scientific using the PICO evidence as well as professional experience formula and patient’s values together on clinical decision PubMed Class▪ Explore different databases and understand their strengths and weaknesses ▪ Create search strategies by using Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) ▪ Perform MeSH database search ▪ Know how to find MeSH terms ▪ Use PubMed tags and filtersDesigning Scientific ▪ Name different types of scientific research Research designs▪ Explain levels of evidence by using hierarchy of evidence pyramid▪ Explain the concept of randomization▪ Explain the importance of allocation concealment
Çakmakkaya BMC Medical Education (2021) 21:437 programs [4]. Based on these suggested principles, the content of the training program should cover the basic steps of EBM, the educational methods should be interactive, student-centered, clinically integrated and the EBM training should be introduced in the pre-clinical years [4,5,6]
We newly developed an EBM training program at Istanbul University-Cerrahpaşa, Cerrahpaşa Medical Faculty (CMF)
Summary
Introduction toEBM ▪ List the components of the PICO formula practice▪ Understand types of the PICO question▪ Formulating focused ▪ Formulate a focused clinical question clinical questions▪ Value using the most reliable scientific using the PICO evidence as well as professional experience formula and patient’s values together on clinical decision PubMed Class▪ Explore different databases and understand their strengths and weaknesses ▪ Create search strategies by using Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) ▪ Perform MeSH database search ▪ Know how to find MeSH terms ▪ Use PubMed tags and filtersDesigning Scientific ▪ Name different types of scientific research Research designs▪ Explain levels of evidence by using hierarchy of evidence pyramid▪ Explain the concept of randomization▪ Explain the importance of allocation concealment. Some Turkish medical schools have individually developed and implemented EBM training programs, but there is no data of current programs’ effectiveness and students’ learning achievements due to the lack of a validated Turkish language EBM assessment tool. Based on these suggested principles, the content of the training program should cover the basic steps of EBM, the educational methods should be interactive, student-centered, clinically integrated and the EBM training should be introduced in the pre-clinical years [4,5,6] Considering these main principles, medical schools can develop a training program that is in line with their education programs’ goals and objectives, the needs of their target groups, and their resources [3, 6]. In Turkey, the national accreditation standards for undergraduate medical education recommend that medical schools should include evidence-based medical practices in their program [7] This standard is a quality development standard, not a basic standard yet, which means that teaching EBM is currently not strictly required. This study is the first Turkish study that reports students’ knowledge and skills in EBM before and after a newly implemented formal instruction using the recently published Turkish adaptation of the Fresno Test [10]
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