The impact of critical appraisal workshops on residents’ evidence based medicine skills and knowledge

Abstract

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

Acknowledgments

We thank Judy Boura, M.S. biostatistician, for her feedback and assistance in preparing these data.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.