Evidence-based practice in Bachelor healthcare education. A survey of attitudes, knowledge and behaviour

• Main Author: Snibsøer, Anne Kristin
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English

Background: Educational programmes in healthcare are expected to integrate evidence-based practice (EBP) into their curricula to ensure that Bachelor students have the requisite EBP attitudes, knowledge and behaviour when they graduate. To assess EBP profiles, instruments with evaluated measurement properties should be used. Few studies have explored EBP profiles among Bachelor students across health disciplines and educational institutions, and research is needed to enhance the understanding of EBP teaching and learning at the Bachelor level. Aim: The overall aim of this PhD project was to contribute to the understanding of measurement and outcomes of EBP learning among healthcare students at the Bachelor level. Methods: Three studies with two different designs were conducted. Paper 1: The Evidence-Based Practice Profile (EBP2) questionnaire was translated and the measurement properties of the Norwegian version (EBP2-N) evaluated among Bachelor students and healthcare professionals. We performed forward-backward translation and evaluated measurement properties related to reliability, validity and responsiveness. Paper 2: We applied the EBP2-N and surveyed final year Bachelor students in nursing, occupational therapy, physiotherapy and radiography from four educational institutions in Norway. We performed regression analyses to analyze differences in mean EBP2-N domain (Relevance, Terminology, Confidence, Practice and Sympathy) scores between health disciplines, Cohen’s d to illustrate the magnitude of the largest differences, and Spearman’s rho (rs) to assess the monotonic relationship between EBP2-N domains and students’ assessment of EBP teaching and expectations of EBP performance, respectively. Paper 3: In this survey, we invited Norwegian and Canadian students to answer the EBP2 Terminology domain items (self-reported), an additional item of ‘evidence-based practice’ and six random openended questions (objective) corresponding to the domain items. We used weighted kappa (Kw) to investigate inter-rater agreement between self-reported and objective items, and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) to estimate overall agreement. Results: Paper 1: The forward–backward translation was repeated three times. Adequate reliability and discriminative validity were found for three of the five EBP2- N domains (Relevance, Terminology and Confidence). The confirmatory factor analysis did not indicate a five-factor model fit. Responsiveness was as expected or bet