Author: Brian S McGowan, PhD

INTRODUCTION:
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is an expectation of professional healthcare and a requisite component of medical school curricula. However, upon graduation medical students’ EBM skills have been found lacking suggesting a need to examine EBM training.
METHODS:
This PhD report presents two studies on EBM education. The first study is a literature review that describes and attempts to assess educational interventions for teaching medical students EBM. The second study presents a multi-institutional case study conducted in North America using interviews and curricular materials to identify EBM instructors’ perceptions of challenges that may impede medical students’ efforts to learn EBM.
RESULTS:
The literature review analyzed 20 learning interventions from 12 countries that were presented in classrooms (75 %) and clinics (25 %). The steps of EBM were addressed to varying degrees. It was not possible to draw conclusions about the efficacy of the interventions due to lack of detailed reporting. The qualitative study identified four learning challenges: sub-optimal role models, student lack of willingness to admit uncertainty, lack of clinical context, and difficulty mastering EBM skills. To meet these challenges, participants described interventions such as integrating EBM skills with other content/courses, incorporating clinical content into EBM teaching, providing faculty development, using whole-task EBM activities, and longitudinal integration of EBM across the curriculum.
CONCLUSION:
This PhD report takes steps to describe and assess EBM learning interventions, presents student learning challenges and looks at approaches institutions take to meet them. Educators can use these findings to examine their curriculum and learning environments and, if desired, adopt them for their training.

via Educating physicians in evidence based medicine: current practices and curricular strategies. – PubMed – NCBI.

The monotony of conventional didactic lectures makes students less attentive toward learning, and they tend to memorize isolated facts without understanding, just for the sake of passing exams. Therefore, to promote a habit of gaining indepth knowledge of basic sciences in medical undergraduates along with honing of their communication and analytical skills, we introduced this more interactive way of learning. The present study was performed on 99 first-semester medical students. After conventional didactic lectures, students were asked to prepare small conceptual questions on the topic. They were divided into two teams, which were made to ask questions to each other. If a team failed to answer, the student who questioned was supposed to answer to the satisfaction of the other team’s student. Data were then obtained by getting feedback from the students on a 10-item questionnaire, and statistical evaluation was done using MS Excel and SPSS. To draft questions, students went through the whole system comprehensively and made questions from every possible aspect of the topic. Some of the questions (30%) were of recall type, but most judged higher cognitive domains. Student feedback revealed that they were satisfied, motivated to read more, and were confident of applying this learning and communication skills in future clinical practice. Students also expressed their desire to implement this activity as a regular feature of the curriculum. The activity resulted in an increase in student perceptions of their knowledge on the topic as well as communicative and analytical skills. This may eventually lead to better learning.

via Engaging medical undergraduates in question making: a novel way to reinforcing learning in physiology. – PubMed – NCBI.