Medical educators have embraced evidence-based medicine (EBM) since its introduction as an innovative approach to medical practice and education in the early 1990s.1,2 The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, the College of Family Physicians of Canada and the US Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education include EBM skills among their mandated core competencies for residency programs. However, despite the availability of authoritative texts,3,4 teaching clinicians the basic EBM skills of formulating questions, finding the relevant literature efficiently, appraising that literature and applying it to their patient care remains challenging.5,6,7 The article by Alexandra Barratt and associates8 on page 353 of this issue of CMAJ constitutes the first in a new series aimed at facilitating this task.
It seems that nearly every general medical journal has its own series devoted to helping clinicians understand and apply the basic principles of EBM. What distinguishes this new CMAJ series is that it targets not only clinician learners but also the teachers of EBM principles. These teachers regularly communicate the principles of critical appraisal to clinician learners in a variety of settings, including ward rounds, at the bedside, during journal club exercises and in formal lectures and seminars. We felt that we could offer some advice to help make the most of these teaching opportunities.
There are thus 2 versions of each article, one for learners of the EBM principle in question and one for their teachers. The learners' version will appear in print in CMAJ, and the related teachers' version will be published online only at www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/171/4/353/DC1 (which can be accessed as an online appendix to the learners' version). The online teachers' version will also give readers access to a variety of extra features, including interactive teaching exercises and other tools, such as PowerPoint slides. Registered subscribers to the Journal of the American Medical Association or the AMA Archives journals will have access to an even broader set of tools, through links to the online collection of educational materials associated with the Users' Guides to the Medical Literature.4
In this introduction to the series, we outline the methods employed by the Evidence-Based Medicine Teaching Tips Working Group to create the components of the package.