The Effectiveness of Student 4 Best Evidence as a Tool to Improve Evidence-Based Practice Competencies in Undergraduate Health Professional Students: a Pilot Study

Objective. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an educational program, based on Students 4 Best Evidence (S4BE) Blog, on Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) competencies (attitudes, knowledge and skills) through an EBP laboratory, in undergraduate students of Physiotherapy.

Design. An observational perspective study. Setting. Physiotherapy School of Italian University. Participants. 70 undergraduate physiotherapist students of the first year, of both genders, were included. Mean age was 20.48+/-3.20 years and 66% were male and 34% were female.

Interventions. The intervention consisted of the use of S4BE to teach EBP competence. The section S4BE "about" has been used to teach the EBP principles and their key steps and the section S4BE "topics" has been used to teach critical thinking and the clinical practice in rehabilitation for a total of 24 training hours.

Main Outcome Measure. The evidence-based practice questionnaire (EBP2Q) has been used to evaluate EBP attitude, knowledge and skills, at the start of laboratory (T0), after 24 training hours (T1) and after 3 months of clinical practice training (follow-up). Statistical analysis was performed with SPSS 17.0 An intra-group analysis has been conducted to verify the improvement during the time. Statistically significant was set at p<0.05.