June 5-8, 2024

Oral health care professionals want to provide optimal patient care informed by the best research, but how does one separate the wheat from the chaff with mountains of information available at our fingertips? Not all clinical research is created equal, but with some basic skills, the busy clinician should be able to examine a scientific article with a critical eye and decide to what extent the information presented can be trusted and is applicable to their patients.

This workshop, June 5-8, 2024 at Penn Dental Medicine, will equip oral health care providers and dental educators with the basic skills needed to critically appraise the scientific literature and apply results to patient care. Where do I search to find research articles to answer my clinical question? What type of study design is best to inform the questions I have? How do I know if I can trust the study I am reading? These questions and more will be addressed in this 3 ½ day intensive workshop offered by world-leading leading experts in evidence-based dentistry and through hands-on interactive critical appraisal activities. You will leave this course with the confidence to pick up any article in your field and decide for yourself how to apply the findings.

Course Audience

  • Clinicians (e.g., residents, dental hygienists, dentists)
  • Users of the scientific literature (e.g., policymakers, public health professionals, researchers)
  • Educators in health care (e.g., academicians, librarians, information specialists)

Educational Objectives

After completing this course, participants will be able to:

  1. Understand the fundamental principles of evidence-informed clinical practice.
  2. Identify the different categories of sources of scientific information, including biomedical databases (e.g., PubMed, EMBASE, CINAHL) and pre-appraised or pre-filtered databases of evidence (e.g., TRIP database, Cochrane Library, synopsis of research articles).
  3. Distinguish more from less trustworthy research studies, with a focus on appraisal of study design (e.g., cross-sectional studies [surveys and diagnostic test accuracy], cohort studies, case-control studies, randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews and meta-analysis, and evidence-informed clinical practice guidelines).
  4. Identify bias in research articles and the impact on the study results and conclusions.
  5. Interpret study results (measures of association) and statistical analysis, differentiating between statistically significant and clinically significant results and their implications for practice.
  6. Apply research findings to clinical practice, identifying strategies to manage uncertainty in clinical decision-making.
  7. Understand the principles of shared-decision making and the consideration of patients’ values and preferences for implementing a person-centered approach to health care.

 

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Contact

Office of Continuing Education
Penn Dental Medicine
PDMContinuingEd@dental.upenn.edu