Undergraduate medical student perceptions and use of Evidence Based Medicine: A qualitative study

Third year medical students were recruited via email to participate in focus group discussions. Four focus groups were conducted separately across four hospital sites. All focus groups were conducted by the same facilitator. All discussions were transcribed verbatim, and analysed independently by the two authors according to the principles of thematic analysis.Focus group discussions were conducted with 23 third-year medical students, representing three metropolitan and one rural hospital sites. Five key themes emerged from the analysis of the transcripts: (1) Rationale and observed use of EBM in practice, (2) Current use of EBM as students, (3) Perceived use of EBM as future clinicians, (4) Barriers to practicing EBM, and (5) Enablers to facilitate the integration of EBM into clinical practice. Key facilitators for promoting EBM to students include competency in EBM, mentorship and application to clinical disciplines. Barriers to EBM implementation include lack of visible application by senior clinicians and constraints by poor resourcing.The principles and application of EBM is perceived by medical students to be important in both their current clinical training and perceived future work as clinicians. Future research is needed to identify how medical students incorporate EBM concepts into their clinical practice as they gain greater clinical exposure and competence.Evidence based medicine (EBM) was introduced as a method for assisting clinicians with obtaining information and synthesising its usefulness to aid clinical decision making. Medical decision making is aided by the principles of EBM when the best available evidence is integrated with a clinician's expertise and patient preferences,[1] regardless of whether the question is one of therapy, diagnosis, harm or prognosis. Elements of evidence based learning and practice include (i) asking an answerable question, (ii) systematically searching for and accessing evidence, (iii) critically appraising the evidenc