The San Antonio CATs Initiative

Area of Science:

• Dental Education
• Evidence-Based Dentistry
• Medical Informatics

Background:

• Healthcare professionals often delay adopting proven treatments.
• Marketing can lead to the rapid adoption of unproven therapies.
• A gap exists in effectively integrating scientific literature into clinical practice.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe a program designed to enhance literature access skills for dental professionals.
• To teach students, faculty, and practitioners how to use research for treatment decisions.
• To address the slow adoption of effective treatments and rapid adoption of unproven ones.

Main Methods:

• Development and implementation of a Critically Appraised Topics (CATs) program at a dental school.
• Training participants in accessing and summarizing relevant scientific literature.
• Assessing the quality of literature summaries produced by participants.

Main Results:

• Participants demonstrated the ability to prepare high-quality literature summaries.
• The program effectively taught skills in accessing and synthesizing research.
• Evidence supports the program's success in improving literature appraisal.

Conclusions:

• The Critically Appraised Topics (CATs) program is effective in teaching essential skills for evidence-based practice.
• This educational approach can help bridge the gap between research and clinical application in dentistry.
• Improving literature access skills can lead to better treatment choices and patient outcomes.