Open AccessPerceptions, Attitude, Practices and Barriers to Evidence Based Medicine among Practitioners of Clinical Medicine in a Tertiary Care Teaching Institute, Punjab, India
Author(s) -
Mohit Sharma,
Priyanka Devgun,
Kanwalpreet Kaur Gill,
Amanpreet Kaur,
Sandeep Kaur
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of evidence based medicine and healthcare
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2349-2570
pISSN - 2349-2562
DOI - 10.18410/jebmh/2021/68
Subject(s) - medicine , tertiary care , cronbach's alpha , family medicine , nonprobability sampling , alternative medicine , inclusion (mineral) , population , psychology , clinical psychology , environmental health , social psychology , pathology , psychometrics
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. KEYWORDS Evidence Based Medicine, Barriers, Clinical Practitioners