Assessing the effectiveness of evidence based practice course on clinical practice of physiotherapy students using objective structured clinical examination [OSCE]

ABSTRACT

To assess the effectiveness of the EBP course on clinical practice of graduate physiotherapy students using OSCE stations. Thirty students of post graduate physiotherapy participated in an EBP course workshop of 30 hours [5 days] in Mangalore, Karnataka, India. The EBP course was designed to teach core EBP knowledge and skills based on the EBP 5 step model. EBP OSCE tool was developed and applied to test the effectiveness of EBP course. The inter-rater reliability of OSCE tool was good [ICC = 0.98, 95% CI 0.93 to 0.99] and highly acceptable Internal consistency [Cronbach's alpha = 0.99] reflects how consistently different OSCE station measure the unified construct, i.e., EBP clinical skills. Before the EBP course, the participants had a mean score of 39% overall, Post course evaluation, the mean percentage of student's performance increased to 69%, indicating 30% improvement with significant improvement at each EBP OSCE stations [p < 0.001]. Short EBP course delivered in workshop mode was effective in improving EBP knowledge and skills of graduate physiotherapy students. This study demonstrated the use of OSCE to test the EBP knowledge and skills in different clinical vignettes