Table 2.

Attitude Toward Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM)

	Agreement*
Attitude	EBM Users(n = 206),n(%)	EBMNonusers(n = 88),n(%)	Overall Degreeof Agreement Mean ± SD
Positive statements about EBM
EBM can play a positive role in clinical practice†	202 (98)	75 (85)	4.3 ± 0.6
Physicians must be able to distinguish methodologically sound frompoor research	192 (93)	80 (91)	4.4 ± 0.7
EBM helps clinical decision making‡	186 (90)	67 (76)	4.0 ± 0.7
EBM improves patient outcomes‡	127 (62)	37 (42)	3.6 ± 0.8
Clinical decisions should be based on the best numerical estimates ofrisks and benefits	114 (55)	40 (45)	3.4 ± 0.9
EBM leads to more cost-effective practice	101 (49)	34 (39)	3.4 ± 0.8
Possible barriers to the practice of EBM
Proponents of EBM tend to be academics rather than front-line clinicians†	83 (40)	54 (61)	3.2 ± 1.0
In most areas of medicine, there is little or no evidence to guide practice	53 (26)	24 (27)	2.7 ± 1.0
EBM is a new concept	54 (26)	20 (23)	2.8 ± 1.0
EBM devalues clinical experience and intuition	30 (15)	20 (23)	2.5 ± 1.0
EBM is impractical for everyday clinical practice‡	22 (11)	20 (23)	2.5 ± 0.9
EBM removes the “art” from medicine‡	18 (9)	18 (20)	2.2 ± 1.0
EBM de-emphasizes history taking and physical examination skills†	14 (7)	18 (20)	2.1 ± 1.0

^*Agreement was defined as the proportion of respondents choosing 4 (agree) or 5 (strongly agree) for each statement. Overall degree of agreement was ascertained using a 5-point Likert scale with 5 = strongly agree and 1 = strongly disagree.

^†p < .001 for comparison between EBM users and nonusers.

^‡p < .01 for comparison between EBM users and nonusers.