Understanding medical student evidence-based medicine information seeking in an authentic clinical simulation

Understanding medical student evidence-based medicine information seeking in an authentic clinical simulation

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Objective: Evidence-based medicine practices of medical students in clinical scenarios are not well understood.Optimal foraging theory (OFT) is one framework that could be useful in breaking apart information-seeking patterns to determine effectiveness and efficiency of different methods of information seeking.The rubbermaid 8 gallon trash can aims of this study were to use OFT to determine the number and type of resources used in information seeking when medical students answer a clinical question, to describe common information-seeking patterns, and identify patterns associated with higher quality answers to a clinical question.Methods: Medical students were observed via screen recordings while they sought evidence related to a clinical question and provided a written response for what they would do for that patient based on the evidence that they found.

Results: Half (51%) of study participants used only mpu63zm/a 1 source before answering the clinical question.While the participants were able to successfully and efficiently navigate point-of-care tools and search engines, searching PubMed was not favored, with only half (48%) of PubMed searches being successful.There were no associations between information-seeking patterns and the quality of answers to the clinical question.Conclusion: Clinically experienced medical students most frequently relied on point-of-care tools alone or in combination with PubMed to answer a clinical question.

OFT can be used as a framework to understand the information-seeking practices of medical students in clinical scenarios.This has implications for both teaching and assessment of evidence-based medicine in medical students.