Presented at LILAC 2017

1. Sa’ad Laws, MA, MLIS
Ross MacDonald, Ph.D.
Assessing first-year medical student’s
information-seeking behaviors:
Implications for instruction
Sa’ad Laws, MA, MLIS
Ross MacDonald, PhD
Liam Fernyhough, BMBS

2. • A little about the EBM process and background
questions
• What our problem was
• Our (long) process to solve the problem
• What our journey means for instruction and (maybe)
you.
What Are You Going To Learn Today?

3. • Where Qatar is…
• Some insights from the research process
• Outcomes of the research process on instruction.
What You Should Take Away…

4. Where is Qatar?

5. Information About WCM-Q
• Total FTE: 296 [Male: 128 / Female: 168]
• Average Age: 21
• Pre-Medical FTE: [97 41/56] AA: 19
• Medical FTE: [187 84 / 103] AA: 22
• Most Predominate Countries: Qatar 93; Egypt 35; India
29; USA 20; Pakistan 13; Jordan 16; Canada 18

6. Information About MPS-1
Medicine Patients & Society – I
• Length: Sept 2015 – June 2016
• Learning Goals:
• Medical Encounter: Professionalism, taking a medical history, clinical
reasoning, medicine and culture, the social history, health care disparities,
patient education and adherence
• Biostatistics/Epidemiology: Basic skills in designing, reading, and
evaluating clinical studies. This section includes EBM
• Life Cycle/Nutrition: development of the individual person, from
birth through old age. nutritional and metabolic concerns.

7. What is Evidence Based Medicine [EBM]?
”The conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best
evidence in making decisions about the care of individual
patients… [It] means integrating individual clinical expertise
with the best available external clinical evidence from
systematic research.”
Sackett DL, Rosenberg WMC, Gray JAM, Haynes RB, Richardson WS. Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn’t. BMJ. 1996 Jan 13;312(7023):71–72.

8. EBM Instruction
• Four – 4 Hour sessions [1hour – Lecture / 3 hours – Lab]
• Students view Modules before instruction
• Librarian/Clinician lead
• Authentic/Practice based learning

9. • Students use resources to answer their BGQ, but
they aren’t the “right” resources.
• What resources should students use?
• How can you determine if a resource is a good
resource for the question/student?
The Problem…

10. What are Background Questions?
“Background questions aim to fill in the gaps in a
practitioner’s general understanding of a clinical situation;
with these gaps filled, the practitioner is able to move on to
more focused clinical questions.”
Straus SE, Glasziou P, Richardson WS, Haynes RB. Evidence-based medicine: how to practice and teach it. 4th ed. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone; 2011. 293 p.

11. What this Research is About?
• What are the online information resources used by the students?
• Do the students use online resources that are oriented at patients/
healthcare consumers, medical students, or medical professionals?
• What is the quality of the online resources used by the students as
measured using standard information literacy criteria?
• What is the quality and relevance of the informational content of the
resources as assessed by a practicing clinician?
• Is there a correlation between the two quality assessment approaches?

12. Our Research Process…
• Mass of data from AY:2016 - 200 HW submissions and 400 BGQ’s
• Formulating our research questions and defining our goals
• Creating a rubric to assess the data
• The beginnings of the data assessment process

13. Preliminary Data Review
• [Analysis of BGQ Resource Type: Consumer vs Professional]
• [Analysis Student Grades: Restricted BGQ vs Unrestricted BGQ]

14. Implications?
• More focus on quality / assessment of resources, less on specific
resources themselves.
• Changes the way that assessment can/should be done to make
students engage with the resources on a more critical level (not
just getting the answer, but reflecting on if where the answer
comes from and the answer itself is any good and how they both
contribute to the process as a whole.)

15. What is Next?
• Explore how to rate what a good question is…
• Explore new means for formative assessment of BGQ’s
• Explore new ways that librarians can collaborate with
faculty

16. Questions?
Thank you and questions…