Poster Board Number: 75
Title: Literature Search Practicum for Third-year Medical Students
Objective: The overall goal of the practicum is to teach future physicians how to utilize evidence-based methodology in real-time patient care environment. Three learning objectives were addressed: to raise students’ awareness of information sources, to improve students’ ability to access and search resources in a timely manner, and to advance students’ understanding of filtering and managing search results.
Methods: The practicum starts with a lecture, introducing the population-problem/intervention/comparison/outcomes (PICO) model and review PubMed’s features and functions. During this lecture, students are introduced to the assessment rubrics for their assignments. This sets expectations and provides students with a timeline to focus this learning activity. The small-group discussions are conducted weekly. Each student in the group presents a clinical case, questions from that case, and the evidence discovery path. Students use searches, saved prior to the session in MyNCBI. A follow-up discussion is facilitated by the librarian.
Results: Students become more comfortable with their ability to break down a clinical question and to use features and functions in PubMed and My NCBI.
Conclusions: Most students find the small group sessions a wonderful learning experience because of the intimate setting and personalized feedback. Students find the process very worthwhile and meaningful.
Authors: Mia S. White, AHIP, Reference Librarian; Anna Getselman, Associate Director, Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library; Erica Brownfield, Associate Professor, Department of Medicine/School of Medicine; Emory University, Atlanta, GA