Diana,
I am a big fan of this. I teach a required EBM course to all four years of our medical students at Albany Medical College. I have found that most of the students really like the course. I also found that the standard texts are on too high a level for first year medical students and have created a syllabus to teach the material on their level and in a different order than usually done in EBM for practicing physicians.
We teach critical appraisal of the medical literature in the first year and medical decision making in the second year. Most of the second year is learning how to work with diagnostic test based upon their characteristics (likelihood ratios). In the third and fourth years, the students must do an EBM project in each rotation. This is a way for them to show explicitly how much they have learned in the course.
Outcomes: There are two objective outcome measures that I have so far. The first is the AAMC post graduation survey. Before my course, the students here uniformly felt that their knowledge of EBM issues was below what they needed. Now most think it is appropriate and the rest that it is 'excessive'. Second, for the past two years, the scores on the biostatistics and epidemiology section of Step 1 of USMLE were higher than any other subset within the test. Anecdotal outcomes of a positive nature abound.
I definitely think that this is a mandatory skill for physicians entering the 21st century, and like biochemistry and cell biology, must be taught beginning in the first year.
Good luck with your endeavor.
Dan Mayer
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Dan Mayer, MD
Professor of Emergency Medicine
Albany Medical College
47 New Scotland Ave.
Albany, NY, 12208
Ph; 518-262-6180
FAX; 518-262-5029
E-mail; [log in to unmask]
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