Perspective of Evidence-Based Medicine among Egyptian Family Physicians in Egypt

Abstract

Objective: To assess family practitioners’ attitudes toward and awareness of evidence-based medicine in Egypt. Introduction: Evidence based medicine (EBM) is a systematic approach to medicine in which health care professionals use the best available scientific evidence to help make decisions about the care of individual patients. The use of evidence-based medicine may help plan the best treatment and improve quality of care and patient outcomes. Methodology: This is a cross-sectional study conducted on 135 family physicians from Rural and urban family medicine centres throughout Egypt that are affiliated with Ministry of Health and the private sector by using self- administered Evidence-Based Medicine Questionnaire distributed between October and November 2020. Results: With a 100% response rate most of the participants were females 91 (68.9%), aged between 30-39 (73.3 %), and worked in mixed urban and rural settings (53.3%). Most physicians welcomed or strongly welcomed the use of EBM (54.1% and 38.2% respectively). Moreover, 97% of the respondents agreed that EBM is useful or extremely useful.The majority (98.5% ) agreed that EBM improves patient care. . About 71% of the participants thought that the adoption of EBM will add more load on the family medicine practitioners Conclusion: Egyptian family physicians generally have a good attitude towards EBM, however their general knowledge about it is still insufficient. Keywords: Guidelines, Standards, Care pathways, Africa, Quality of health care