Advances in Medical Education and Practice (Apr 2018)
The impact of critical appraisal workshops on residents' evidence based medicine skills and knowledge
Abstract
Justine A Nasr,1,2 John Falatko,1 Alexandra Halalau1,2 1Internal Medicine Department, Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, MI, USA; 2Internal Medicine Department, Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine, Rochester, MI, USA Objective: To assess the impact of four evidence based medicine (EBM) critical appraisal education workshops in improving residents’ EBM knowledge and skills. Methods: The eligible participants in the workshops were 88 residents-in-training, postgraduate years one through four, rotating through the outpatient internal medicine clinic. Four EBM workshops, consisting of 3 days each (30 minutes daily), were taught by our faculty. Topics covered included critical appraisal of randomized controlled trials, case-control and cohort studies, diagnosis studies, and systematic reviews. Results: As a program evaluation, anonymous pre-workshop and post-workshop tests were administered. Each of the four sets of tests showed improvement in scores: therapy from 58% to 77% (42% response rate), harm from 65% to 73% (38% response rate), diagnosis from 49% to 68% (49% response rate), and systematic review from 57% to 72% (30% response rate). Conclusion: We found that teaching EBM in four short workshops improved EBM knowledge and critical appraisal skills related to the four topics. Keywords: evidence based medicine, medical education, assessment methods, graduate, instructional design, curriculum development, curriculum evaluation
