Teaching Learning Strategies for Evidence Based Medicine Among Healthcare Professionals: A Systematic Review

OBJECTIVES:

Practice of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) is a critical public health problem and a difficult clinical strategic approach around the world. We aimed to conduct a systematic review to evaluate the teaching learning aspects of EBM among healthcare professionals to enhance the effectiveness of current EBM practice.

METHODS:

This study followed Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Guidelines (PRISMA). A comprehensive search strategy was used to retrieve articles from Medline and Embase from inception till May 2022. To find additional studies, bibliographic search of included studies & reviews; and a random search in Google, Research Gate & Google Scholar were carried out. This review evaluated both qualitative and quantitative studies on teaching learning aspects of EBM among healthcare professionals. The methodological quality of the included studies was assessed using Modified New castle Ottawa scale.

RESULTS:

A total of 42 out of 8139 studies with 3724 participants were included in this study. The majority of the studies were conducted among professionals from mixed disciplines (n=13), followed by physicians (n=11), nurses (n=10), allied healthcare professionals (n=2), physical therapist (n=2), complementary and alternative medicine professionals (n=2), mental health practitioners (n=1) and surgeons (n=1). The average quality score of the studies were 3.6 out of 6. Discussion with experts, colleagues & peers, Blended learning, group activities & assignments, workshops & journal club, task based learning, EBM course, access to research evidence, training, role play, EBM central database, EBM helpdesk facility, and curriculum modifications were the identified teaching learning aspects of EBM from different qualitative and quantitative studies.

CONCLUSIONS:

EBM competency is a prerequisite for practicing EBM for healthcare professionals. Healthcare professionals curriculum and health care professionals' lifelong learning might adopt a strong, standardized strategy for teaching methods for enhancing EBM among health professionals.