Didactic Physician Assistant Students’ Perceptions of Evidence-Based Medicine Resources: A Cross-Sectional Examination

Objectives: Evidence-based medicine (EBM) instruction is required for physician assistant students. This pilot study seeks to understand which attributes of EBM resources PA students find most and least useful, and their self-efficacy in searching and appraising medical literature.

Methods: Students at three PA programs completed a cross-sectional questionnaire at the end of their didactic EBM course that included preferences for commonly used databases, (PubMed, PubMed Clinical Queries, Embase, Cochrane, the TRIP database, Micromedex, Dynamed+, and UpToDate), and self-efficacy in searching/appraising the literature. Thematic analysis identified the most important student-reported attributes of a resource.

Results: Eighty-seven students completed the questionnaire (39.5% response rate). The most accessed tool was UpToDate while the least accessed tool was Embase. Students rated that the most important attributes were ease of use/search, information presentation, and conclusion/critical appraisal skill. After one EBM course, on average, students rated their self-efficacy searching the literature (M=3.2, SD=0.6) and appraising the literature (M=3.1, SD=0.8) as ‘moderately confident’.

Conclusions: PA students in this sample preferred UpToDate as their top EBM tool based on attribute ratings and Embase as their least preferred EBM tool. However, each database included in this pilot study received positive feedback, despite a low usage rate across institutions. This suggests that instructors and librarians have an opportunity to expose students to more tools as well as encourage “the right tool for the right job.” Survey results indicate that PA students value ease of use above all else, which can inform both educators and designers of EBM tools.