Evidence-based healthcare and provider accountability requires that chiropractors access, appraise, and apply the body of current scientific evidence to chiropractic practice. This paper reports on the design, implementation, and evaluation of one innovative curricular strategy for creating competent, evidence-based chiropractic healthcare practitioners.
Course was designed employing didactic, experiential, and Socratic methods to teach evidenced-based skills to chiropractic students. Following pilot-testing, course was implemented for 2 years. Data was gathered from course and faculty evaluations and a periodic pre- and post-survey on student’s attitudes; perceived abilities; and knowledge and skills.
Course and instructor evaluation measures demonstrated a general upward trend or no effective change over the 2 years. Descriptive comparisons of pre and post survey data by cohort, indicate some positive changes in student’s perceived abilities and knowledge of effective literature search and retrieval skills (e.g. familiarity with content of search databases and correctly identifying peer-reviewed journals). Student performance on the critical appraisal skill set did not noticeably change from pre to post-course.
A valuable lesson gained was that the “success” of a course such as the one described here should not be measured on the basis of single course evaluations. The trends of evaluation results over successive course administrations yield a more accurate picture, particularly with innovations. Pre- and post- measurement of student performance present useful insight.
Learning Objectives: Learning Objectives, attendees will: 1. understand issues relative to “evidence-based” skills development 2. explore and discuss innovative strategies for teaching evidence-based skills 3. learn of a weblink address for relevant materials
Keywords: Chiropractic, Evidence Based Practice
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
Disclosure not received
Relationship: Not Received.