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.