Development and assessment of a blended learning module for educating a general audience about Evidence-Based Practice

ID: 

4014

Session: 

Poster session 4 Saturday: Evidence implementation and evaluation

Date: 

Saturday 16 September 2017 - 12:30 to 14:00

Location: 

Exhibition Halls 1 & 2

All authors in correct order:

Avau B1, Borra V2, Hooyberghs H3, De Buck E4, Vandekerckhove P5
1 Centre for Evidence-Based Practice, Belgian Red Cross, Mechelen/Cochrane Belgium, Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, Leuven, Belgium
2 Centre for Evidence-Based Practice, Belgian Red Cross, Mechelen, Belgium
3 Belgian Red Cross, Mechelen, Belgium
4 Centre for Evidence-Based Practice, Belgian Red Cross, Mechelen/Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Faculty of Medicine, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
5 Belgian Red Cross, Mechelen/Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Faculty of Medicine, KU Leuven, Leuven/Faculty of Medicine, University of Ghent, Ghent, Belgium
Presenting author and contact person

Presenting author:

Bert Avau

Contact person:

Bert Avau
Abstract text
Background: The Belgian Red Cross (BRC) aims to scientifically support all its activities through evidence-based practice (EBP). The Centre for Evidence-Based Practice (CEBaP) is concerned with this, but also tries to spread EBP by offering half-day courses in EBP to employees, who are unfamiliar with EBP. The goal of this course is to motivate people to have a critical attitude towards the validity and usefulness of information, to teach them the basics of EBP and to point out the advantages and limitations of evidence-based work.
Objectives: The newly developed course (3 E-learning sessions, taking 1 hour to complete, followed by a 1.5 h contact moment) will be compared to our traditional half-day classical course with relation to attitudes, self-perceived and measured knowledge.
Methods:A blended-learning module was developed and will be launched in May 2017, and will replace our face-to-face classical course. The attitudes, self-perceived and measured knowledge of its users will be compared with participants of the final half-day classical course from January 2017 (n=10). Short questionnaires are taken before and after participation, and analyses are made using a Wilcoxon Log-Rank test at the 95% confidence interval.
Results: The half-day classical course led to an increase in perceived knowledge, as demonstrated by an increased knowledge on formulating a PICO question (median pre 1.5 IQR [1;3.5] vs post 4 [4;5], p=0.009) or recognition of a systematic review (4 [3;5] vs 4[4;5], p=0.02). Also the measured knowledge score increased from 6 [5.25;6] before the course to 8 [8;9] after the course (p=0.01). In contrast, the attitudes of the participants towards EBP was already high and did not change significantly. The results of the participants in the E-learning course will be collected in May 2017, compared to the results of participants in the classical course and will be presented at the Summit.
Conclusions: An EBP course increases the knowledge, but not attitudes of employees of BRC. This study will investigate how a blended-learning module compares to a classical course with respect to participant’s change in attitudes to and knowledge of EBP.