Background:
The gap between evidence and practice is an important problem that may, in part, be exacerbated by language barriers.
Methods:
We surveyed members of the Japanese Society for Fracture Repair regarding their self-perceived familiarity with evidence-based medicine, and barriers to keeping up with evidence relevant to their practice. We subsequently enrolled these same orthopedic surgeons in a randomized trial to explore the impact of providing 20 electronic links to English or Japanese OrthoEvidence summaries on whether surgeons accessed the link.
Results:
A total of 106 participants were enrolled in the study, and 105 completed the pre-trial survey. Fifty-seven participants acknowledged barriers to adopting EBM; the three most prominent reasons were lack of time (77%), lack of training in critical appraisal (100%), and language barriers (95%). The mean EBM familiarity score on a 4-point scale, higher scores indicating greater familiarity, was 2.59 (standard deviation [SD] 0.38, 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.52 to 2.66). Our randomized trial found no significant difference in the number of evidence summaries that were accessed whether they were provided in Japanese (median 9, interquartile range[IQR] 5 to 15; n = 52) or English (median 3, IQR 2 to 15; n = 53) (p=0.06).
Conclusion:
Although most Japanese orthopaedic surgeons acknowledge barriers in adopting EBM into clinical practice, and highlighted language as a key barrier, providing evidence summaries in Japanese did not significantly increase the number that were accessed. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / Evidence-based medicine (EBM) incorporates current best evidence into clinical decision-making. The volume of new publications presents a challenge to staying on top of research findings in practice. Further, as most research is published in English, language barriers may hinder adoption into practice by non-English clinicians.
We administered a survey to Japanese orthopedic surgeons to assess their familiarity with EBM, and perceived barriers to incorporating EBM into clinical practice. We subsequently conducted a randomized trial to explore the effect of providing electronic links to Japanese or English research summaries to Japanese orthopedic surgeons on whether or not they accessed summaries. Participants endorsed several barriers to incorporating EBM into practice, including lack of time, lack of training in critical appraisal, and language barriers; however, there was no difference in the number of evidence summaries accessed in our trial whether research reports were provided in English or Japanese.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/28015 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Saka, Natsumi |
| Contributors | Bhandari, Mohit, Health Research Methodology |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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