Supplementary Materials

Title: Reworking EBM and Medical Informatics Instruction to Accommodate Self-Directed Learners. (PDF)

Authors: MacEachern MP, Townsend W, Shannon C, Mani NS, Zeylikovich I, Mangrulkar RS. 

Conference: Central Group on Educational Affairs (CGEA) 2013 Spring Meeting, Cincinnati, OH. 

References

1. MacEachern M, Townsend W, Young K, Rana G. (2012). Librarian Integration in a Four-Year Medical School Curriculum: A Timeline. Medical Reference Services Quarterly, 31(1), 105-14.

2. Aronoff SC, Evans B, Fleece D, Lyons P, Kaplan L, Rojas R. (2010). Integrating Evidence Based Medicine Into Undergraduate Medical Education: Combining Online Instruction with Clinical Clerkships. Teaching and Learning in Medicine, 22(3), 219-223.

3. Bernardo V, Ramos MP, Plapler H, de Figueiredo LF, Nader HB, Ancao MS, von Dietrich CP, Sigulem D. (2004). Web-based Learning in Undergraduate Medical Education: Development and Assessment of an Online Course on Experimental Surgery. International Journal of Medical Informatics, 73, 731-742.

4. Chao SH, Brett B, Wiecha JM, Norton LE, Levine SA. (2012). Use of Online Curriculum to Teach Delirium to Fourth-Year Medical Students: A Comparison with Lecture Format. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 60(7). 1328-1332.

5. Masters K, Gibbs T. (2007). The Spiral Curriculum: Implications for Online Learning. BMC Medical Education, 7:52.

6. Stoddard, HA, Pamies RJ, Carver DS, Todd GL. (2008). Developing an Online Prematriculation Orientation Program and its Relation to Student Performance in the First Class Taken in Medical School. Teaching and Learning in Medicine, 20(4). 302-307.

7. Cook DA, Levinson AJ, Garside S. (2010). Time and Learning Efficiency in Internet-Based Learning: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Advances in Health Sciences Education, 15. 755-770.

8. Van Djiken PC, Thevoz S, Jucker-Kupper P, Feihl F, Bonvin R, Waeber B. (2008). Evaluation of an Online, Case-Based Interactive Approach to Teaching Pathophysiology. Medical Teacher, 30(5). 131-136.

9. Howlett D, Vincent T, Watson G, Owens E, Webb R, Gainsborough N, Fairclough J, Taylor N, Miles K, Cohen J, Vincent R. (2011). Blending Online Techniques with Traditional Face-to-Face Teaching Methods to Deliver Final Year Undergraduate Radiology Learning Content. European Journal of Radiology, 78(3). 334-341.

10. So HJ. (2009). Is Blended Learning a Viable Option in Public Health Education? A Case Study of Student Satisfaction with a Blended Graduate Course. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, 15(1). 59-66. 

The Value of Library and Information Services in Patient Care: Results of a Multisite Study

From JMLA.  Key findings:

Library and information resources were perceived as valuable, and the information obtained was seen as having an impact on patient care.

Electronic access to information resources from multiple locations has increased the ability of health professionals to use these resources for improved patient care.

The roles of librarians are diversifying to include management of electronic resources, user instruction and support, specialized research and clinical information search services, and involvement in institution-level quality improvement.

It is possible to conduct a large-scale, multisite study on the value and impact of library services on patient care.

(via coworkers)

re: Clinical Queries

Searchers can be assured that the clinical queries for therapy, diagnosis, prognosis, etiology, and clinical prediction guides perform equally well in detecting relevant, methodologically sound studies in the current publishing years as they did when they were derived over a decade ago in the publishing year 2000.

JAMIA study.  From the group responsible for creating the filters.   

[via coworkers]

Wilczynski NL, McKibbon KA, Walter SD, Garg AX, Haynes RB. (2013). MEDLINE clinical queries are robust when searching in recent publishing years. JAMIA, 20(2), 363-8. PMID 23019242.

Out-of-Date Systematic Reviews

This paper compares 5 statistical methods for identifying out of date SRs: 

While I'm not going to be running statistical tests to identify out-of-date reviews, knowing that such tests exist might come in handy at some point when chatting w/ researchers. 

[via Evidence-Based Health]

Pattanittum P, Laopaiboon M, Moher D, Lumbiganon P, Ngamjarus C. (2012). A comparison of statistical methods for identifying out-of-date systematic reviews.  PLoS One, 7(11). PMID 23185281 PMC3502410

Differences Between Internal Documentation and Published Results

Interesting study!  The authors (from the summary):

used internal company documents released in the course of litigation against the pharmaceutical company Pfizer regarding the drug gabapentin, to compare between the internal and published reports the reporting of the numbers of participants, the description of the types of analyses, and the definitions of each type of analysis.

to find that there were (also from summary):

several important differences between the internal and published documents about the number of patients included in the analysis

From the paper:

In our sample of industry-supported trials in off-label uses of gabapentin, we observed discrepancies between what was reported in trial publications and what was described in internal company research reports. In this regard, we found that the trial publication was not a transparent, or accurate (presuming that the research report truly describes the facts), record for the numbers of participants randomized and analyzed for efficacy. In three of ten trials in our sample, the number of participants randomized in the trial, as specified in the “main publication” [24],[26],[27], was not the same as that described in the research report. The “main publication” was a full-length journal article for two of the three trials with a disagreement in the number of participants randomized in the trial [24],[26], and a conference abstract describing preliminary results for the third trial [27]. In one case, the description in the publication did not include data from 40% of participants actually randomized in the trial (as described in the research report; see Table 1) [26]. There was such wide variation in describing the participant flow in the included trials, even among documents for the same trial, that we were unable to summarize what we found.

& 

We are concerned that, even for commonly used types of analysis such as ITT, a number of different definitions were used across trials included in our sample.

& the authors conclude with recommendations for improved standards and increased transparency.  

(More)

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Vedula SS, Li T, Dickersin K.  Differences in reporting of analyses in internal company documents versus published trial reports: Comparisons in industry-sponsored trials in off-label uses of gabapentin.  PLoS Med. 2013 Jan;10(1). PMID 2332656 PMC3558476