About

This website provides a platform for the global sharing of learning resources for teaching and learning Evidence-Based Health Care (EBHC).

To be included in the Library, a learning resource must:

  • Be freely available
  • Be relevant to one or more of:
    • the EBM Stages (0 – Why EBM?, 1 – Asking focused questions, 2 – Finding evidence, 3 – Appraising evidence, 4 – Decision making, 5 – Evaluating performance), or
    • the Key Concepts

The resources have been identified by searching the internet and by user submissions.  You can read our methods paper here (Castle et al 2017).  Website editors approve all submissions before publication in the Database.

Who the website is for

The website is aimed at helping people who teach EBHC to undergraduate or postgraduate health professionals, and students with a special interest in EBHC such as Students for Best Evidence. There are number of possible uses of the material:

  • Preparing a lecture at short notice
  • Needing to find an amusing or engaging illustration of EBHC concepts
  • Planning a course on EBHC
  • Finding preparatory reading for students
  • First-time course development

Learning resources are stored in the Critical Appraisal Resources Library (CARL) database.  You can search, filter and rate resources, and suggest new ones via our Suggest a Resource page.

Website members can comment on resources and collate multiple resources into Bundles for sharing with their students and others.  Click here to join our network.

Soon, you will be able to embed this database in your own website using our API.  We will make announcement about this in the New Year (January 2019).

Membership

We invite membership from anyone interested in teaching evidence-based health care.  We currently have 110 members from around the world.

Membership allows you to comment on Resources and create Bundles of resources for your own use.  See the help page for more details.

Members receive a regular email digest of new Learning Resources that have been added to the Database.

We intend to recruit Editors from our Membership who are willing to help approve suggestions for new resources to be added to the database.

We also run a separate JISCmail discussion list for Teachers of EBHC called ebhc-teachers@jiscmail.ac.uk.  Registration is free and open to anyone.

Ratings and comments

User feedback is central to this project.  Please rate any resources of which you have personal experience.  Your ratings are anonymous.  Qualitative feedback can be given using the Comments, which are not anonymous.  Please also use the Comments to tell us about any problems you find with a Resource (e.g. broken link, incorrect classification).

Suggest a resource

We welcome your suggestions for resources to include in the database.  We particularly want to receive suggestions for:

  1. Resources that address topics already covered, but which do so more effectively than the existing resources do
  2. Resources that address topics that are not already covered.

Your suggestions are stored on the system and moderated by our Editors.

Who is behind the website?

Development of the website was funded by the James Lind Initiative.  It is hosted by the International Society for Evidence-Based Health Care.

Editors

The Editors are (UK unless stated) Patricia Atkinson, Douglas Badenoch, Jose Calvache (Colombia), Paul Glasziou, Dragan Ilic (both Australia), Janet Martin (Canada), David Nunan and Julie Tilson (US).

References

Castle JC, Chalmers I, Atkinson P, Badenoch D, Oxman AD, Austvoll-Dahlgren A, et al. (2017) Establishing a library of resources to help people understand key concepts in assessing treatment claims—The “Critical thinking and Appraisal Resource Library” (CARL). PLoS ONE 12(7): e0178666. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178666