A Meta-analysis of E-learning Interventions in Teaching Evidence-based Practice for Health Science Students

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is currently considered as the golden standard for patient care. Many universities offer EBP courses to their healthcare professions students. However, no quantitative evidence synthesis has been conducted to compare EBP e-learning instructional methods to traditional methods, to better inform health education policymakers. Eight randomised studies reporting the effectiveness of e-learning methods compared to “no intervention” or to any other educational methods and including 1,243 learners met the inclusion criteria. The meta-analytical results revealed that e-learning was significantly better than “no intervention” [d = 1.4, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.060 to 1.776, I² = 99.5%, p < 0.0001] and as effective as other traditional methods such as lectures (d = 0.30, 95% CI = –0.348 to 0.952, I² = 90.5%, p = 0.3). The same conclusions were found when using the adjusted exam scores in relation to confounding variables such as the baseline characteristics and prior EBP knowledge of participants. The present meta-analysis demonstrates that teaching EBP via e-learning is an effective instructional method in times when lecture hours and face-to-face didactics are reduced or not possible such as during this COVID-19 pandemic and the likely-to-happen future outbreaks.