Evidence-based medicine among hospital doctors in Jordan: awareness, attitude and practice

The aim of this cross-sectional study was to determine the awareness and attitude of hospital doctors towards evidence-based medicine (EBM) and their related educational needs.

A questionnaire study was performed on a randomly selected sample of 386 hospital doctors from both a teaching hospital and the Ministry of Health general hospitals in Jordan. Attitude towards EBM, best method of moving from opinion-based medicine to EBM, accessing and interpreting evidence and perceived barriers to practise EBM among participants were the main outcome measures.

Participants welcomed promotion of EBM and 91.2% agreed that research findings are helpful in daily management of patients. About one-third of respondents (32.7%) thought that the most appropriate way to move towards EBM was by seeking and applying EBM summaries. About one half of participants (47.9%) were unaware of Cochrane database and only 5% used it to help in clinical decision making. More than half (53.7%) reported that they had access to the Internet at their office. Only minority understand the technical terms used in EBM. The major barriers to practising EBM were threat to clinical freedom/judgement, limited resources and facilities, patient overload absence of library in the locally and lack of personal time.

Although there is a high support among doctors for the promotion of EBM, there is a deficit in knowledge and skills of EBM. Hence, the time appears ripe for planning and implementing an effective EBM educational programme for both undergraduate and postgraduate doctors.