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

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.