A Bridge Between the Academic and Clinical Setting: Evi*

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A Bridge between the Academic and Clinical Setting: Evidence-based Heatthcare Practice in the Clinic. Healthcare providers routinely make decisions affecting patients in daily care. Traditionally, such decisions have been based on such factors as experiences, intuition, lectures from teachers or colleagues, and findings from the research literature. Evidence-based medicine (EBM), on the other hand, is the integration of best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values. Information technology makes access to scientific literature more available than ever before, but access to on-line services is still subject to the "digital divide." Obstacles preventing health care providers from using databases such as PubMed or Medline to answer clinical questions include: lack of access to Internet, lack of skills to search databases effectively, and lack of confidence in evaluating research reports, among others. Arcadia University requests a grant that will better prepare undergraduate and graduate students in biology, psychology, and health sciences and also assist fifteen clinical sites to move towards the use of evidence-based medicine in their clinical practices. The program described here will merge the capabilities of the NLM Medline database with subscriptions to peer-reviewed journals so that Arcadia faculty and students and the professional staff at small health care facilities (where our students complete internships or clinical education rounds) may access full-text articles on-line. If funded, the grant will provide substantially improved medical research capabilities for students and faculty in the following graduate programs at Arcadia University: doctorate of physical therapy, master of science in physician assistant studies, master of science in genetic counseling, the master of science in public health, master of science in health education, and master of arts in counseling psychology programs. Undergraduate students and faculty in the psychology and biology departments will also make us of the medical library services. The grant will provide library access and services for clinical staff and students at fifteen smaller hospitals and healthcare institutions in rural and underserved urban locations. The institutions selected provide clinical education opportunities for our physical therapy, physician-assistant studies, and counseling psychology students. Grant-funded activities will include: two years subscription fees for approximately 55 peer-reviewed journals in the Allied Health field to be accessed by clinic sites and Arcadia students, a two-day training session on evidence-based practice, information literacy, and use of Medline database for clinicians from participating sites; a new Dell desktop computer for each participating clinic site dedicated to research, two years of cable Internet service for participating sites that don't already have lnternet access, website for cohort of clinic sites and student interns; and a symposium on evidence-based medicine for cohorts from clinic sites. The principal investigator is Rebecca Craik, professor and chair of the Department of Physical Therapy at Arcadia University. The planning team for this grant includes Param Bedi, head of information technology and Ann Ranieri, head of library technical services at Arcadia University.