Medical Student Question Formulation Skills Development: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Objectives: Eldredge et al. reported at MLA 2020 on their quasi-experiment involving a new FAC (Focus, Amplify, Compose) rubric for assessing medical students’ Evidence Based Practice (EBP) question formulation performance. This new rubric, when linked to complementary hands-on training, improved student scores. This study builds on the previous study by measuring whether the rubric alone, or when combined with a 25-minute intervention, will be more effective in teaching second-year medical students on how to formulate effective EBP questions.

Methods: Randomized Controlled Trial. 80 second-year medical students were randomized into either an intervention group or a control group prior to the beginning of the block. The authors administered a pre-test to all students that presented them with a clinical vignette and asked them to formulate an EBP question. Following the pre-test, all students were shown the question formulation rubric and it was briefly explained. Students in the intervention group were taught how to formulate EBP questions using the rubric followed by another 30 minutes of EBP search training. Students in the control group only received the EBP search training in their small group labs. All 80 students took the post-test in which they formulated a question in response to a clinical vignette. Statistical analysis will involve a two-sample paired t-test to test between-group differences.

Results: The authors collected their pre-test and post-test data for the intervention and the control groups during December 2020. The authors will report their findings at the MLA 2021 Annual Meeting.

Conclusions: The authors will offer their conclusions during the MLA 2021 Annual Meeting.