Is evidence-based medicine teaching and learning directed at improving practice?

Introduction
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) has evolved as a key skill to be taught and learnt in medical education. There are several methods for teaching EBM1–3 but the aim of teaching should be to impart knowledge, attitudes and skills to improve clinician performance and patient care. Without an adequate assessment it is difficult to know whether a teaching intervention has the desired effect. How frequently is teaching directed to achieve these objectives and how good are we at measuring learning achievement? An overview of assessments used in studies evaluating outcomes of EBM teaching was undertaken to address this question.

There are many publications on the outcomes of EBM teaching but little has been written about the coverage of educational domains in tools used for assessing outcomes. A systematic review4,5 on this subject failed to examine if studies covered established educational domains grounded in Bloom's taxonomy6 and Kirkpatrick's hierarchy,7 which allow examination of the impact of teaching on a sliding scale from a simple record of attendance to application of evidence in practice leading to improvements in health outcomes. We evaluated how existing EBM assessments rank on these scales. We also examined measurement quality of tools in terms of validity.