Do Brazilian medical students use evidence?

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Abstract
Objectives:


- Knowledge evaluation and use of the best available evidence by Brazilian medical students.

- To perform training on critical appraisal and grading evidence for this population.


Methods: A multiple-choice questionnaire about intervention effectiveness demonstrated by systematic reviews will be applied to students, in their last year of studies from Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP), a public university. The interventions may be: 'effective and safe' in which harms expectation is small compared with benefits, 'non-effective' or 'harmful'. After the instrument application, a lecture on grading evidence, evidence sources and studies summary that answer the questions correctly will be presented.

Results: One hundred and thirteen students from UNIFESP are being evaluated. Data are still being collected and the results will be available by August 2006, to be presented in Dublin.

Conclusions: Considering data from a primary analysis and related studies, it may be said that Brazilian health practice is not based in evidence, and even young doctors are not prepared to use this essential instrument to deal with the huge number of scientific publications and new technologies.