Educational strategies to enhance EBM teaching and learning in the workplace: A focus group study

Abstract

Objectives: This study aimed to gather and synthesise educational strategies that can improve teaching and learning of evidence-based medicine (EBM) in the workplace, and make them concrete by listing ideas for implementing these strategies. Insight into current workplace-based EBM teaching and learning in general practice was the starting point to generate these strategies and ideas. Design: Exploratory, qualitative focus group study, applying the consensus method of the nominal group technique. Setting: Postgraduate medical education; general practitioner (GP) specialty training at University Medical Centre Utrecht, the Netherlands Participants: 33 GPs and 17 GP trainees, divided in four focus groups. Using opportunistic sampling, participants were selected from the GP workplace because of their role as supervisor or trainee. Main outcomes: An overview of educational strategies and ideas on how to implement these strategies in the workplace, followed by the participants' global ranking of the most useful ideas. Results: The supervisors and trainees generated a list of educational improvement strategies that can be applied in learning conversations, while observing each other's consultations, and in (multidisciplinary) learning opportunities in the workplace. Table 1 presents the educational strategies and suggestions for implementing them. Ideas regarded as most useful include taking turns to conduct consultations and observing the other, holding a structured, in-depth discussion after observation, preparing and discussing articles found in relevant journals and on-the-spot searching for relevant evidence during learning conversations. Conclusions: Participants provided an extensive list of educational strategies and ideas on how to implement EBM learning in daily practice. As a great deal of GP training takes place in clinical practice, supervisors and trainees could apply the suggested ideas to enhance EBM teaching and learning in the workplace.