Instructional practices for evidence-based practice with pre-registration allied health students: a review of recent research and developments

Danielle Hitch, Kelli Nicola-Richmond

The aim of this study is to update a previous review published in this journal on the effectiveness of teaching and assessment interventions for evidence based practice in health professions, and to determine the extent to which the five recommendations made from that review have been implemented. The Integrating Theory, Evidence and Action method was used to synthesise all published evidence from 2011 to 2015, which addressed instructional practices used for evidence based practice with pre-registration allied health students. Seventeen articles were found to meet the inclusion criteria, and were analysed for both their individual rigour and relationship to the five recommendations. The evidence reviewed in this study was diverse in both its geographical setting and the allied health disciplines represented. Most of the evidence used less rigorous methods, and the evidence base is generally exploratory in nature. To date, the five recommendations regarding instructional practices in this area have been implemented to varying degrees. Many current practices promote social negotiation, collaborative decision-making and collaborative learning, so the social constructivist approach is being adopted. However, the prior knowledge of students is not being assessed as a basis for scaffolding, communication of evidence based practice to varying audiences is rarely addressed and the role of clinicians in the learning of evidence based practice knowledge, skills, beliefs and attitudes remains limited.