Knowledge and Attitude of Medical Students and Lecturers Toward Evidence-Based Medicine: Evidence from Shiraz

Background and purpose: The application of diagnostic, therapeutic, and prognostic evidence in day-to-day management of patients has been in constant focus during the last two decades. This study is an attempt to investigate attitude and knowledge of post-graduated medical students and lecturers towards evidence-based medicine (EBM) and assess their preferences to clinical practice guidelines. Methods: The designed questionnaire was posted to the randomly selected post-graduated medical students and lecturers of medical department at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. Results: There were one hundred sixty subjects (60%) who answered the questionnaire. Sixty nine percent were male, 46.3% were lecturers, and 53.2% were post-graduated medical students. About 66% of the respondents have heard of the term of EBM. Only 7.8% of the respondents have already attended to a course to learn the skills of EBM and one hundred twenty five (78.1%) like to attend a course to learn the skills of EBM. The most common perceived reason for use of EBM was lack of enough motivation. Conclusion: They have not yet integrated the use of EBM into their practices widely. Their knowledge is at a high risk of becoming out of data. Education of EBM should be a hot topic among educational planning programmers until it becomes a part of university educational curriculum in Iran.