Chinese involvement of EBM and Cochrane activities

Article type
Authors
Wang L, Liu M, Li Y, Zhang M, Wei M
Abstract
Objective: Since 3 years ago, Chinese Cochrane Centre has done much work to support people who hope to be involved in EBM and Cochrane activities, such as training, dissemination, research, evidence-based clinical practice, etc. More and more Chinese people became interested in Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) and Cochrane Collaboration. To identify the Chinese involvement of EBM & Cochrane activities and the current attitudes & needs towards the Chinese Cochrane Centre , we conducted a survey.

Methods: A survey had been conducted using a questionnaire in participants of the workshops on EBM and Cochrane activities held by our centre in different cities around the country from 2000 to 2001. Ninety hundred fifty-five participants in 13 workshops were investigated. The data was analyzed by SPSS 10.0.

Results: The feedback rate varied from 53.2% to 98.6% (some questionnaires were not collected because of the absence of the participants at the end of the workshops). The participants were mainly from hospitals, research institutions or medical universities and health administration sectors. Of the participants, 30% to 55% had some basic knowledge about EBM before the training, which was mainly learned from related books/journals/newspapers, workshops/meetings/lectures, or Internet. Their major aims to attend the workshops were to learn the knowledge and methods on EBM (over 80%), or to find opportunities to cooperate with the Chinese Cochrane Center (from 15% to 25%). About 89.7% to 100% of the participants thought the teaching contents and teachers were "excellent" or "good". Around 52.5% to 89.4% of the participants were satisfied with the discussion and exercise. More than 90% of the participants said the workshops was very useful and met their objectives. The workshops were thought helpful for their research (from 78 to 85%), clinical practice (about 50 to 70%), decision-making (about 15 to 25%) and teaching (around 20%). Most of them (over 90%) hope to involved in EBM & Cochrane activities, which were "getting further advanced training", "initiating some researches on EBM", "disseminating and teaching EBM in China", "hand-searching and establishing database of Chinese clinical studies", "translating the EBM and Cochrane information" sequentially. Actually, with the fund of Chinese Cochrane Centre, about 45 work groups initiated researches on Health Technology Assessment (HTA) and 29 work groups initiated researches on Cochrane System Review (CSR). Up to now, 9 CSRs have been published in Cochrane Library and 10 researches have been finished the protocol.

Conclusions: Most Chinese participants of workshops were satisfied with the training and supports provided by the Chinese Cochrane Center. Further attention should be paid to meeting the different needs of the Chinese people towards the Chinese Cochrane Centre, and made greater efforts to encourage Chinese people to participate in the EBM & Cochrane activities more actively and effectively.