Awareness and use of evidence based medicine (EBM) in medical trainees

The concept of evidence based medicine (EBM)involves a systematic approach for integrationof best available research evidence into medicaldecision making for physicians, medical traineesand researchers. The EBM process includes fiveessential steps: formulating the questions, searchingfor evidence, appraising the evidence, and applyingand evaluating the results (1). In a descriptive study,the data about EBM skills obtained from the medicaltrainees showed that printed textbooks served asthe first source of information in 80% of cases andfollowed by E-books as the second source. Thehard copy journals in libraries had the lowest use.Easy access to information was selected as the mainreason for using printed resources. Also, fast accessto information was the most important reason forusing electronic resources. In a study conducted byRohani, it was found that physicians used printedsources more than e-books (2). This was due totheir easy access to the printed reference books.Considering the fact that it takes a lot of time fornew medical information to log in into the referencebooks, effective treatment of a disease may be enteredin printed sources after its efficiency is confirmed.45.2% of the participants were familiar withINLM. 32.1% of the students had attended thetraining course on INLM. 85.7% of the participantswere familiar with the PubMed, 28.6% with theElsevier and 16.7% with Science direct. 31% of theparticipants were familiar with the concept of EBM,but 7.1% were aware of the resources of EBM, and12.2% had attended the special courses on EBM. Theresults of the recent data taken from internet showedthat 53.8% of participants sometimes used it indiagnosis and treatment process and 28.2% of themused it after being developed into textbooks. Also,this information was sometimes useful for 75.8% ofparticipants.Half of the students were familiar with the conceptof EBM, but a few had attended the introductorycourse on EBM. Hanson in his study maintained thatonly 1.9% of physicians used specific methods to findvalid evidence of medicine (3). Taheri showed thatmedical students were satisfied with the workshopon EBM and stated that familiarity with EBM wasessential for proper functioning (4). Therefore, itseems necessary to organize the training workshopson the concepts of EBM as a part of formal trainingfor medical trainees to change the students' attitudes.