EBD workshops teach critical summary skills
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Posted May 7, 2008 |
By Jennifer Garvin Dallas—Private practitioners and academics alike gathered at the ADA's first evidence reviewers workshop March 27-28 to learn more about evidence-based dentistry and how to assess systematic reviews, which are the basic compendiums of relevant evidence for a given clinical question.
Dr. James Bader, professor of operative dentistry, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill dental school, and Dr. Rick Niederman, director, Center for Evidence-Based Dentistry, The Forsyth Institute, led the workshop. Participants learned to write critical summaries of systematic reviews, a key feature of the new EBD Web site the ADA is developing. The Journal of the American Dental Association will publish one critical summary each month once the EBD Web site is launched later this year.
Dr. Judy Fan-Hsu, a general dentist from Bethesda, Md., said she decided to attend because she wanted to participate in "helping the profession along in having more evidence-supported dentistry for the best possible treatment in patient care.
"I enjoyed attending the workshop," Dr. Fan-Hsu said. "I was impressed with the caliber of the panel of perspective reviewers and was honored to be invited as one of the reviewers. I learned a lot from the workshop from Drs. Niederman and Bader, and from the rest of the panel along with all the attendees. The workshop helped me to understand some of the methodology and challenges of EBD research. It also helped me understand how and why the critical summaries should be written."
Dr. Daniel Tylka became interested in evidence-based dentistry three years ago. A prosthodontist, he cited temporomandibular disorder as one of the subjects where the research was divided.
"We need to put evidence-based dentistry into a palatable way for dentists to understand," said Dr. Tylka, who teaches in the removable prosthodontics department at the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry and practices one day a week. "I think the way the ADA is doing it is going to work out extremely well."
Following the workshop, the participants are expected to begin to prepare critical summaries for the EDB website. For the first critical summary, the participants were assigned a partner and the assignment is due in June. After that, they will begin preparing individually-written critical summaries.
Dr. Bader, who is on the Critical Review Panel that oversees the Evidence Reviewer program, said that's when he and the other EBD experts will be able to determine the success of the workshops.
A second presentation of the workshop for another group of reviewers is scheduled for June 23-24 in Chicago. Dr. Jack Gunsolley and Dr. Robert Weyant, members of the Critical Review Panel, will join Drs. Niederman and Bader in conducting the workshop. After the workshops, all evidence reviewers will receive individual mentoring and feedback to further develop their skills in preparation of the critical summaries.
For more information about EBD, visit www.ada.org/goto/ebd.
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