An evaluation of the small group study in the critical appraisal special study module

INTRODUCTION Critical appraisal is one of the steps towards evidence-based medicine. Today, the production of new knowledge is quite rapid and its evaluation is becoming increasingly difficult. To overcome these difficulties, educational activities incorporating critical appraisal practices in medical education programmes have found a place in curricula around the world. The aim of this study is to determine the opinions of trainers and students about the practice that is included in the Critical Appraisal Special Study Module (CA-SSM), which is carried out as a structured programme in Dokuz Eylül University Faculty of Medicine (DEUFM) and is carried out as a small group study. METHOD The population of the study consisted of 417 students who took CA-SSM in DEUFM Term 2 in the academic year 2023-2024 and 32 trainers who participated in the exercises. The opinions of the students and trainers were collected electronically using two different forms. They were asked to give a score between 0 and 5 for each item. Percentage distributions, means and standard deviations were calculated for both groups. The Mann-Whitney U tests were used in the analyses. p < 0.05 was set as the statistical significance level. Thematic analysis was used for qualitative data. RESULTS The response rate for students was 51.8% and 62.5% for trainers. The mean for all items evaluated by both groups was above three points. The highest mean belongs to the item "level of preparation of trainers for practice" with 4.56 for the students and to the item "sufficiency of time allocated for practice" with 4.55 for the trainers. There was no statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the students according to their gender for any of the items (p>0.05 for all). The most common theme in the written feedback was that the application was instructive and useful for the students, while for the trainers the placement of the application within the programme affected the students' performance. There was no statistically significant difference between the students and the trainers in their evaluation of the articles used in the application. However, there was a statistically significant difference between the groups in terms of student participation and the evaluation of the adequacy of the time allocated for implementation (M-W U=1532,000 p=.023 and M-W U=1342,000 p=.003, respectively). DISCUSSION Students and trainers find the CA-SSM implementation valuable. Although the feedback from students and trainers on the CA practice is generally positive, it is important to make arrangements in line with the data obtained to increase the efficiency effectiveness of the practice. In order to enrich the programme and increase its educational impact, it would be appropriate to carry out studies to evaluate all its components.