Meeting the challenge of evidence-based medicine in the family medicine clerkship: closing the loop from academics to office.

Abstract

An EBM Seminar and POEM® project was developed to teach evidence-based medicine in a family medicine clerkship. The seminar focused on the application of preclinical coursework in biostatistics and epidemiology to the clinical third year. POEM projects involved answering clinical questions, derived from patient cases in the family medicine offices, with best available evidence. These questions and answers were archived in a wiki which was made available to the institution's family medicine physicians. Selected POEMs were also published in the in-house family medicine newsletter. The POEM projects evolved from an educational exercise for medical students to a valuable repository of evidence for clinicians.