Abstract
BackgroundThe influence, legitimacy and application of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) in the world is growing as a tool that integrates, the best available evidence to decision making in patient care. Our goal was to identify the relationship between self-perception about the relevance of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) and the degree of basic knowledge of this discipline in a group of physicians.MethodsA survey was carried out in a third level public hospital in Mexico City. Self-perception was measured by means of a structured scale, and the degree of knowledge through parameter or “rubrics” methodology.ResultsA total of 320 questionnaires were given to 55 medical students (17 %); 45 pre-graduate medical interns (14 %); 118 medical residents (37 %) and 102 appointed physicians of different specialties (32 %).Self-perception of EBM: The majority of those surveyed (n = 274, 86 %) declared that they were very or moderately familiar with EBM. The great majority (n = 270, 84 %) believe that EBM is very important in clinical practice and 197 physicians (61 %) said that they implement it always or usually. The global index of self-perception was 75 %.Knowledge of EBM: Definition of EBM; Seven of those surveyed (2 %) included 3 of the 4 characteristics of the definition, 82 (26 %) mentioned only two characteristics of the definition, 152 (48 %) mentioned only one characteristic and 79 (25 %) did not include any characteristic of EBM. Phases of the EBM process: The majority of those surveyed (n = 218, 68 %) did not include the steps that characterize the practice of EBM, of which 79 participants (25 %) mentioned elements not related to it. The global index of knowledge was 19 %.ConclusionsThe majority of the surveyed physicians have a high self-perception of the relevance of EBM. In spite of this, the majority of them did not know the characteristics that define the EBM and phases of the process for its practice. A major discrepancy was found between self-perception and the level of basic knowledge of EBM among the surveyed physicians.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12909-016-0681-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
The influence, legitimacy and application of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) in the world is growing as a tool that integrates, the best available evidence to decision making in patient care
The objective of this study was to identify selfperception regarding the degree of familiarity with importance and applicability of EBM in a group of medical students, physicians in different stages of their training and medical specialists with an ongoing hospital clinical practice, in order to establish their relationship with their degree of knowledge of the concept and general method of EBM
The majority of those surveyed were graduates of or students at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) (n = 174, 54 %), other public universities were 103 that corresponds to 20 %, a smaller number came from private universities (n = 27, 8 %) and 16 participants (5 %) had studied in foreign universities
Summary
The influence, legitimacy and application of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) in the world is growing as a tool that integrates, the best available evidence to decision making in patient care. Our goal was to identify the relationship between self-perception about the relevance of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) and the degree of basic knowledge of this discipline in a group of physicians. Perception has been defined as the personal view that an individual has of him/herself and of reality It is construed based on cognitive processes and on the personal sense of person’s experience [6]. Since EBM seeks to incorporate scientific thinking to patient care, the self-perception of physicians about their knowledge of this discipline is of fundamental importance for an effective learning experience, one which can be generalized and even transferred to a different context [8]
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