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Abstract
Background: Medical educators are increasingly faced with directives to teach Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) skills. Because of its nature, integrating fundamental EBM educational content is a challenge in the preclinical years.
Aims: To analyse preclinical medical student user satisfaction and feedback regarding a clinical EBM search strategy.
Methods: The authors introduced a custom EBM search option with a self-contained education structure to first-year medical students. The implementation took advantage of a major curricular change towards case-based instruction. Medical student views and experiences were studied regarding the tool's convenience, problems and the degree to which they used it to answer questions raised by case-based instruction.
Results: Surveys were completed by 70% of the available first-year students. Student satisfaction and experiences were strongly positive towards the EBM strategy, especially of the tool's convenience and utility for answering issues raised during case-based learning sessions. About 90% of the students responded that the tool was easy to use, productive and accessed for half or more of their search needs.
Conclusions: This study provides evidence that the integration of an educational EBM search tool can be positively received by preclinical medical students.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Samuel Mark Keim
SAMUEL M KEIM, MD, MS is the director of the Evidence Based Decision Making curriculum at The University of Arizona College of Medicine.
David Howse
DAVID K HOWSE, MLIS, is an Information Services Librarian at The University of Arizona specializing in EBM and Knowledge Transfer solutions.
Paul Bracke
PAUL J BRACKE, MLS, is formerly Systems Librarian at The University of Arizona but is now Associate Dean for Information Technology at Purdue University.
Kathryn Mendoza
KATHRYN A MENDOZA, PhD is an education and assessment specialist for The University of Arizona College of Medicine.