Objective: To identify the views of evidence-based practice (EBP) experts about information that should be included in EBP courses.
Design: A two-round Delphi process.
Setting and subject: The panel of experts in teaching EBP residing in developed and developing countries identified through purposive and snowball sampling.
Main outcome measures: We developed a list of 49 topics representing key educational topics. The panel scored the importance of topics for inclusion in introductory and advanced courses. In the second round, we sent a summary of results to the panel and asked them to re-score in light of the group's responses.
Results: We used email to invite 105 EBP teachers to participate in the study. Fifty-one people from 15 countries agreed to participate, and 40 completed the second round. We achieved consensus that formulating clinical questions, searching pre-appraised resources, introduction to systematic reviews and critical appraisal of studies about therapy should be covered earlier in EBP courses while other critical appraisal topics and quantitative decision-making techniques should be left to more advanced levels.
Conclusion: Experts concur that introductory EBP courses should be simple and certain topics should be avoided. Specifically, critical appraisal and statistical methods should be left to advanced courses.