Minimal Criteria for Approving Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) Courses for the Resident by the Saudi Council of Health Specialties - Learning outcomes

Learning Outcomes

At the end of the course, the candidates should have been familiar to the following competencies, which are based on the five steps of EBM.
Translation of uncertainty in to an answerable question. The student identifies knowledge gaps during the course of practice and asks foreground questions to fill these gaps. The student should ask focused questions that lead to effective search and appraisal strategies.
Search for and retrieval of evidence. The student can design and conduct a search strategy to answer questions. The student understands the strengths and weaknesses of the different sources of evidence.
Critical appraisal of evidence for validity and clinical importance. The student can appraise the validity of a study. The appraisal will include: the suitability of the type of study to the type of question asked, the reliability of outcome measures chosen, and the suitability and robustness of the analysis employed. The student can appraise the importance of the outcomes and translate them into clinically meaningful summary statistics, such as number needed to treat (NNT). The course should cover the therapy, diagnosis, and systematic review (Meta analysis) studies.
Application of appraised evidence to practice. The student can assess the relevance of the appraised evidence to the need that prompted the question. The student can explore the patient's values and the acceptability of the answer.
Evaluation of performance. After the student had asked the focused question(s), searched sources of evidence, appraised or used pre-appraised evidence and applied these in practice, (S)he would reflect on how well these activities were performed.