Evaluating the impact of an evidence‐based medicine educational intervention on primary care doctors’ attitudes, knowledge and clinical behaviour: a controlled trial and before and after study

Abstract

The results of the study suggest that the intervention positively influenced attitudes and knowledge; however, no statistically significant impact was found on doctors' test ordering performance and on their patients' drug utilization. The intervention's inability to change doctors' clinical behaviour might be remedied by improving future interventions through adding additional facets to the educational intervention, such as social marketing techniques and personal feedback. A longer and more extensive intervention might be more effective but is extremely difficult to execute as we found in this study. Future larger-scale interventions must incorporate the intervention into the routines of the organization, thus minimizing barriers towards EBM implementation.