Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: Effective and appropriate use of information and communication technologies is an essential competency for all healthcare professionals. With the development of information globalization, the ability to acquire, process and use information is particularly important.
Objectives:To evaluate the effects of evidence-based medicine (EBM) courses on informatics competencies of medical college students.
Methods: We included 88 fifth- and seventh-year medical program and postgraduate medical students who selected the EBM course. We used the self-completion 'informatics competencies questionnaire' to describe and measure students’ informatics competencies pre-and post-EBM courses. The questionnaire contains three parts: information acquisition capability, processing capability, and usage capability.
Results:
1. Information acquisition capability: students like obtaining information through the Internet, library and communicating with teachers and classmates. After the EBM courses, the students could construct search strategies better, most of the students (56.1%) could formulate answerable clinical questions, and the postgraduate change obviously in expanding database (86.4% to 97.6%, P value < 0.05).
2. Information processing capability: after the EBM courses, the proportion identifying important information increased, and more students could tell the true information from the false (79% to 89.9%, P value < 0.05).
3. Information usage capability: after the course, more students could cite the article by article with right format (27.1% to 45.8%, P value < 0.05). More postgraduates could adopt the true information (35.5% to 48%, P value < 0.05).
Conclusions: The evidence-based medicine course has a positive effect on the informatics competencies of medical students.
Objectives:To evaluate the effects of evidence-based medicine (EBM) courses on informatics competencies of medical college students.
Methods: We included 88 fifth- and seventh-year medical program and postgraduate medical students who selected the EBM course. We used the self-completion 'informatics competencies questionnaire' to describe and measure students’ informatics competencies pre-and post-EBM courses. The questionnaire contains three parts: information acquisition capability, processing capability, and usage capability.
Results:
1. Information acquisition capability: students like obtaining information through the Internet, library and communicating with teachers and classmates. After the EBM courses, the students could construct search strategies better, most of the students (56.1%) could formulate answerable clinical questions, and the postgraduate change obviously in expanding database (86.4% to 97.6%, P value < 0.05).
2. Information processing capability: after the EBM courses, the proportion identifying important information increased, and more students could tell the true information from the false (79% to 89.9%, P value < 0.05).
3. Information usage capability: after the course, more students could cite the article by article with right format (27.1% to 45.8%, P value < 0.05). More postgraduates could adopt the true information (35.5% to 48%, P value < 0.05).
Conclusions: The evidence-based medicine course has a positive effect on the informatics competencies of medical students.