Evidence Based Practice for Clinicians

Course Description

This course provides students with the necessary skills and tools needed to find and evaluate the ever-increasing knowledge base in their chosen field. The course seeks to motivate students to update their knowledge throughout their career by applying these skills, and participating in clinical research. For the course syllabus, click here.

Critically Appraised Topics

Student complete a course project involving a critical appraisal of the available evidence surrounding a clinical research question. The project might incorporate practice-based evidence as described in the video...

Disclaimer: These critically appraised topics have not been formally peer reviewed, other than by the faculty members associated with this course at the University of Western Ontario.

For the link to the EBP Project Permission form, click here.

Conference Proceedings

FOR THOSE WHO PREFER, PLEASE FIND THE VIDEO SCRIPT IN TEXT FORMAT BELOW 
Dear Clinical Educators and colleagues
I’m Lisa Archibald, a faculty member in the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Western University.  One of the courses I teach in the graduating year of our speech language pathology program is Evidence Based Practice for Clinicians.
Of course, evidence based practice involves the use of current best evidence in making decisions. The best approach integrates evidence from research, from clinical practice, or from the patient directly.  At Western, we’ve adopted a new format for our evidence based practice course. We hope that this new format will allow students the opportunity to incorporate clinical evidence and patient responses in their considerations of the current evidence. We’re excited about this new approach and we hope you will be too.
In the evidence-based practice course, students complete an individual project involving a critical review of the available evidence on a particular clinical question of interest. Students now have the 2nd academic year of their program to complete the project, from September to April. It is our hope that this longer time span will allow students to collect and integrate into their project evidence from clinical placements or ongoing research projects.
Collected relevant clinical outcomes from one or more individuals who are receiving (or have received) services related to the clinical topic of interest will be an optional component of the project, but one we hope you will join us in encouraging students to complete. Here’s what would be involved: A student under your supervision might approach you about using the clinical data collected as a normal part of the patient’s clinical services as part of the project. That data would be included as part of the student’s project when the project is presented at our annual poster day and in the written paper posted on our course website.
Importantly, the data will be used for educational purposes only – not for research purposes. I have met with the Research Ethics Officer at Western University who has advised me that a research ethics proposal is not required in this case. However, we need to seek the patient’s permission to use data for educational purposes. For this, we’ve developed a permission form for patients to sign. The permission form describes the project, where the project is presented, and that the data will be de-identified and used for educational purposes only. You are welcome to review the permission form and also have your privacy officer review the form at your agency. When the form is signed, the student will provide a copy for the patient’s record at your facility.
Our new project will allow greater opportunities for students to integrate research, clinical outcomes, and patient evidence. We’re excited about this new development towards a best practice approach to teaching evidence based practice. WE hope you will be too!
Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions at the email address on your screen. You can see the permission form at the link shown.
Thank you.