Assessing the FACTTS: an evidence-based medicine and critical appraisal course for medical students.

The Fourth-year Academic Clinical Training and Teaching Selective (FACTTS) is a course taught by medical and library faculty on the practice of evidence-based medicine and critical appraisal of the medical literature. This study assesses the impact of the course on students' understanding of the subject matter by examining three years of pre- and post-test data and addresses whether the number of sessions in the course affects the knowledge gained by the students. The data show an improvement in the students' understanding of course material, but no benefit was found in having two versus three sessions.

Decreased hospital length of stay associated with presentation of cases at morning report with librarian support.

Objective: The research sought to determine whether case discussion at residents' morning report (MR), accompanied by a computerized literature search and librarian support, affects hospital charges, length of stay (LOS), and thirty-day readmission rate.

Methods: This case-control study, conducted from August 2004 to March 2005, compared outcomes for 105 cases presented at MR within 24 hours of admission to 19,210 potential matches, including cases presented at MR and cases not presented at MR. With matching criteria of patient age (+/- 5 years), identical primary diagnosis, and secondary diagnoses (within 3 additional diagnoses) using International Classification of Diseases (ICD-9) codes, 55 cases were matched to 136 controls.