Assessment of a Mini-Course in Evidence-Based Medicine

Abstract

Objective: To practice evidence-based medicine a core set of concepts must be mastered. Recognizing this, we sought to develop and assess a mini-course in evidence-based medicine for fourth-year medical students. Design: A two-hour curriculum on evidence-based medicine training was developed and applied on a sample of fifty-five fourth-year medical students. The knowledge acquired by participating to the course were assess through application of a survey which contains a number of ten questions. Setting: "Iuliu Haţieganu" University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Subjects: Fourth-year medical students. Results: The results of the two-hour course on evidence-based medicine demonstrate increasing the student’s level on evidence-based medicine knowledge, presenting the modality of practicing evidence-based medicine centered on patient and his/her medical problem and sensitizing the students on the usefulness of using the best available evidence in daily medical decisions. Conclusion: Our two-hour teaching intervention in evidence-based medicine has had a positive change on fourth-year medical students’ knowledge, but teaching effectively evidence-based medicine concepts requires a more complex approach throughout medical education.