EVIDENCE-BASED HEALTH CARE

The EBHC course is designed to help students develop an attitude of inquiry about their own practice or work environment which will lead them to examine the health care literature for possible answers. The course will teach students to critically appraise the health care literature to decide whether the study findings should guide changes in practice/management/policy. The students will learn strategies to implement and evaluate the recommended changes and teach literature searching and critical appraisal skills to students and practitioners. This course will provide the students with the skills to improve health care practice through the use of best research evidence.

OBJECTIVES

This course will address the following objectives:

• To define EBHC and to learn its impact and limitations on professional education and patient/client care.
• To learn the individual and organizational barriers to EBHC.
• To formulate answerable clinical/management/education/policy questions.
• To conduct efficient and productive searches that identify the best information to answer the question.
• To critically appraise the evidence related to primary studies of health care interventions, systematic reviews, qualitative research, prognosis, harm, clinical practice guidelines, quality of care, and quality of life.
  To apply findings to health care decision-making.
  To introduce strategies to facilitate EBHC in health care/policy settings.
  Method of Presentation

The course will be taught in small groups using problem-based learning through face-to-face interactions. On-line discussion will supplement the sessions.