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1st appeared
25
April 2000
From the Internet to the Exam Room – Evidence-Based Medicine More and more often, patients are going into their doctor’s offices armed with an ad torn from a magazine that touts an experimental new drug, or a few pages of health advice they have printed out from the Internet. How can doctors respond? A conference on evidence-based medicine at UCSF, April 13-14, helped physicians learn how to use the Internet to find reliable information on the latest research findings, teach them how to evaluate that data, and show them how to talk to patients about complex topics such as the results of a clinical trial. The conference was sponsored by UCSF’s Department of Family and Community Medicine, with support from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, the Western Journal of Medicine, Kaiser Permanente of California, and The Network, a collaboration to improve medical education and health care. The recent explosion of health information from the Internet and advertising from drug companies has made it tougher for doctors to keep up. The primary goal of the workshops, according to course director Pete Lovett, MD, a UCSF assistant professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine, was "to make physicians aware of where high-quality evidence is, how to critique it, and how to convey it to patients in a way they can understand." Physicians attending the UCSF workshop learned about the techniques of evidence-based medicine from three different kinds of experts: librarians, clinical epidemiologists, and patient communication experts. Unlike other classroom-based seminars on the topic, physicians at the workshops had the chance to practice techniques on-the-spot, using computer searches and model patients. "The bulk of the time was spent in small groups of 10 people, each with 5 computers, a physician trained in clinical epidemiology, an expert on how to communicate with patients, and a librarian," said Tom Newman, MD, MPH, a UCSF professor of epidemology and biostatistics, laboratory medicine, and pediatrics. One focus of the program was to make the latest information understandable to the average patient, he said. The conference began with a simulated physician-patient interaction, in which the patient requested a recommendation on a heavily advertised therapy. With the help of the librarians, participants worked through a search of the relevant information sites on the Internet. Physicians trained in clinical epidemiology helped each group evaluate the information they gathered. Then, the communications experts worked with the groups to synthesize the information into a coherent summary that could be quickly communicated to patients. The 55 physicians who attended will be able to bring what they’ve learned back to their own institutions, Lovett said. "We want to help learners understand the advantages and limitations of evidence-based medicine, and give them an opportunity to network and collaborate on new initiatives in evidence-based medicine," he said. Source: Kevin Boyd, News Services |
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