Assessing the FACTTS: An Evidence-Based Medicine and Critical Appraisal Course for Medical Students

Abstract

The Fourth-year Academic Clinical Training and Teaching Selective (FACTTS) is a course taught by medical and library faculty on the practice of evidence-based medicine and critical appraisal of the medical literature. This study assesses the impact of the course on students' understanding of the subject matter by examining three years of pre- and post-test data and addresses whether the number of sessions in the course affects the knowledge gained by the students. The data show an improvement in the students' understanding of course material, but no benefit was found in having two versus three sessions.

Instructional methods used by health sciences librarians to teach evidence-based practice (EBP): a systematic review

“…However, undergraduate programs in nursing [40], dentistry [26], occupational therapy and physical therapy [28,39], respiratory therapy and physician assistant [39], and graduate-degree students in physician assistant [24] and health sciences research [27] were also represented. The number of participants and their assignment to groups (e.g., intervention and control groups) varied considerably, from 10 [16] to more than 300 [25], with an estimated average of 50 participants per training session.…”

“…Five studies [17,22,32,34,36] included instruction in four out of five skills (all except assessment), and another seven studies [20,25,31,33,35,38,39] addressed three EBP skills, though which three of the five varied. For details on EBP steps covered in each study, refer to online only Table 1.…”

“…Of the twenty-seven studies selected for inclusion, twenty-six were journal articles and one was an academic conference proceeding [14]. Sixteen articles, representing more than half of the publications in this set, were published in library and information science journals: seven in the Journal of the Medical Library Association [15][16][17][18][19][20][21], four in Medical Reference Services Quarterly [22][23][24][25], four in Health Information & Libraries Journal [26][27][28][29], and one in the Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association/Journal de l'Association des bibliothèques de la santé du Canada [30]. Ten articles were published in health sciences journals, including two in BMC Medical Education [31,32], three in the Journal of General Internal Medicine [33][34][35], and five in other health sciences journals [36][37][38][39][40].…”

“…Asking an answerable question, clinical question development, and/or the PICO question format was second, with 22 of the 27 studies including this skill [15][16][17][18][19][20][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. Twelve studies [17,18,20,22,25,29,31,32,34,36,38,39] addressed critical appraisal of evidence for 1 or more of the following: level of evidence based on hierarchy of evidence; study design; statistics use and reporting; therapy, diagnosis, or other question type-specific indicators such as likelihood ratios, number needed to treat, or absolute risk reductions; or evaluation criteria for qualitative and quantitative study designs, or for websites. Application of evidence to clinical cases, clinical scenarios, or case studies was addressed by 11 studies [17, 18, 22, 30, 32-36, 38, 39].…”

Instructional methods used by health sciences librarians to teach evidence-based practice (EBP): a systematic review

“…Acquiring the best evidence (search strategy development, searching techniques, information sources, study selection, and acquiring of full text) was the most common step included, with all 27 studies addressing this skill during instruction. Asking an answerable question, clinical question development, and/or the PICO question format was second, with 22 of the 27 studies including this skill [15][16][17][18][19][20][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. Twelve studies [17,18,20,22,25,29,31,32,34,36,38,39] addressed critical appraisal of evidence for 1 or more of the following: level of evidence based on hierarchy of evidence; study design; statistics use and reporting; therapy, diagnosis, or other question type-specific indicators such as likelihood ratios, number needed to treat, or absolute risk reductions; or evaluation criteria for qualitative and quantitative study designs, or for websites.…”