Knowledge and attitude of medical students and lecturers toward evidence-based medicine: evidence from Shiraz

ABSTRACT

The application of diagnostic, therapeutic, and prognostic evidence in day-to-day management of patients has been in constant focus during the last two decades. This study is an attempt to investigate attitude and knowledge of post-graduated medical students and lecturers towards evidence-based medicine [EBM] and assess their preferences to clinical practice guidelines. The designed questionnaire was posted to the randomly selected post-graduated medical students and lecturers of medical department at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. There were one hundred sixty subjects [60%] who answered the questionnaire. Sixty nine percent were male, 46.3% were lecturers, and 53.2% were post-graduated medical students. About 66% of the respondents have heard of the term of EBM. Only 7.8% of the respondents have already attended to a course to learn the skills of EBM and one hundred twenty five [78.1%] like to attend a course to learn the skills of EBM. The most common perceived reason for use of EBM was lack of enough motivation. They have not yet integrated the use of EBM into their practices widely. Their knowledge is at a high risk of becoming out of data. Education of EBM should be a hot topic among educational planning programmers until it becomes apart of university educational curriculum in Iran