Don’t just blame the evidence: considering the role of medical education in the poor uptake of evidence-based medicine in clinical practice

Teaching evidence-based medicine application: transformative concepts of information mastery that foster evidence-informed decision-making

“…Although EBM has evolved since its initial description to include individual clinical expertise and shared decision-making through an understanding of patients’ values and expectations,6 its fundamental contribution to medicine is its prioritisation of sources of evidence, recognising that findings derived from controlled clinical trials are closer representations of ‘the truth’ than a thorough understanding of pathophysiology or single or limited anecdotes derived from patient care experiences 7. In this model, clinicians are asked to think deductively, relying on results from clinical trials (the evidence of EBM) and acknowledging uncertainty in medicine to guide decisions made for individual patients 8–10. The EBM approach thus requires a paradigm shift in medical decision-making, from one that is mechanistic to one that is probabilistic.…”

Observing and Assessing Competence in Evidence-Based Medicine in Graduating Medical Students: A 5-Year Multi-Institution Report

“…2 While the ability of trainees to demonstrate competence in EPA 7 is an expectation, the same cannot be said of medical schools' ability to provide comprehensive assessment of this EPA. 3 Importantly, this is a broader problem than EPAs. Performance of EBM is a category across all other competency frameworks for medical graduates, and yet, there are only validated tools to assess knowledge and skill, but not yet for competence.…”

Librarian-Led Assessment of Medical Students’ Evidence-Based Medicine Competency: Facilitators and Barriers

“…Meanwhile in medical education, student assessment is evolving from focusing on knowledge to embracing the complexity of competence or the ability to apply knowledge to improve actual practice. While there are existing competency frameworks for EBM [3], there is limited guidance on how competency in this area should be assessed or who should be the assessors [2,4]. Health sciences librarians (HSLs), as primary instructors of this domain, should be, but rarely are fully integrated into the program of assessment for medical students [5][6][7].…”