Mohit Sharma1, Priyanka Devgun2, Kanwalpreet Kaur Gill3, Amanpreet Kaur4, Sandeep Kaur5
BACKGROUND
Lack or relative absence of access or disinterest in the use of standardised
protocols in diagnosis, treatment and management of majority of ailments is a
phenomenon very often seen but rarely acknowledged in the medical fraternity.
This occurrence extends to many of the higher centers of healing and teaching
including tertiary care institutes. We wanted to assess the perceptions, attitudes,
practices and barriers to practice of evidence-based medicine among practitioners
in clinical medicine in a tertiary care institute.
METHODS
A structured proforma containing Evidence Based Practice Questionnaire by Upton
and Upton (2006) was administered to faculty members of various clinical
specialties between July to September 2019. Non probability purposive sampling
technique was used to enlist 50 participants who met the inclusion criteria. The
completed proformas were collected and data was analysed using SPSS v.21. After
analysing the data, in depth interviews of 16 consenting faculty members was
conducted to identify barriers to practice of evidence-based medicine.
RESULTS
The mean score for knowledge domain of evidence based medicine was 53.18, SD
= 7.05, for the attitude was 16.90, SD = 2.12 and that for practice was 20.50, SD
= 5.26. The Cronbach alpha for the three domains were found to be 0.57, 0.62
and 0.81. The familiarity with common bio statistical terms and measures was best
with odds ratio (78 %) and relative risk (64 %) and poorest with the understanding
of parametric, non-parametric tests and power of the study (2 %). Of the 50 study
subjects, 26 (52 %) used MS Excel for data analysis, 32 (64 %) generic search
engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN to search for relevant medical literature. The
thematic analysis of the interview transcripts of 16 interviewed faculty members
revealed that barriers for non-practice of EBM were lack of comfort with research
process, lack of mentoring, incomplete knowledge on how to conduct literature
research and lack of time.
CONCLUSIONS
Practice of evidence based medicine has come a long way but still has a longer
way to go.
