EBMtalks and EBMplay Level 1 Package Deal

EBMtalks level 1 (Pre-recorded Lectures, Streaming-only)

EBMtalks is the first in a 4 level program designed to develop a deeper understanding and appreciation for the principles of evidence-based medicine and healthcare practice. Each level will build upon the last to help you develop confidence in reading, understanding and critically appraising healthcare research .

This level in core foundations will introduce you to the history and philosophy of science and evidence-based practice. You will learn about the different types of observational and clinical research to appreciate their usefulness - and their limitations.

The language of research can be learnt and fluency can be achieved. This course will help you to learn how to search for and find research online, how to identify a variety of common study models and discover how each has been designed, when they are appropriate to be used, what we can and cannot infer from each study type, what the common errors and pitfalls are and deepen your understanding of confounders.

A key aim for the course is to introduce the concept of epidemiology and how it is relevant to understanding of health and disease. You will learn about the gold standard of randomised controlled trials where we will explore the fascinating world of placebo and nocebo effects and understand the psychological, social and biological underpinnings of their effects.

You will also be introduced to what are arguably the most important forms of evidence: systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

The core foundation level course will introduce research using a non-mathematical approach however you will learn some of the basics about several of the types of statistical models used to interpret healthcare research and how to make sense of the numbers in simple, practical ways to help you understand the outcomes of studies. You will also be able to appreciate the different types of statistical models used for specific types of research and interpret visual represenations of some of these.

This course is ideal for you if you are a healthcare practitioner or student wanting to refresh or deepen your understanding of evidence-based practice, especially from more of a nutrition perspective. Whether you want to find the best quality evidence to support your patients or develop your understanding about an area of interest at a deeper level, making friends with research is essential. If you are a nutrition student and you are struggling with research concepts or want to further develop your skills to help you prepare for written assignments, this course is great for you.

If you are neither a healthcare student nor practitioner but are generally interested in learning how to read healthcare research and improve your understanding of evidence-based medicine and healthcare science, to improve your critical thinking skills in a world of nutrition guru's, fad diets and fake news, this course could be a great introduction for you.

This is not a nutrition course and so you will learn nothing new about nutrition itself, though you will learn how to find information about nutrition or any healthcare related topic independently. The course will assume no prior level of knowledge of research methods, statistics or science, but will be aimed at university level. It will also be a pre-requisite to more advanced levels of the EBMtalks which will be offered in the future.

The core-foundations course will run over 10x 2.5 hour sessions, starting in April and ending early June so it should fit in smoothly with academic year end and start, for student attendees. You can watch the lectures any time during the period indicated on your ticket (19th April to 8th June 2022)

Detailed slides will be provided for each session. These are copyrighted and cannot be shared with anyone not attending the course. The EBMtalks core foundations level course can only be purchased as a whole. The 10 sessions can be used for 25 hours CPD. This ticket provides a package including the EBMplay (discussed later, below).

The synopsis for each day is as follows:

Day 1: History and philosophy of science and evidence-based medicine.

Day 2: Finding research: databases, search engines, optimising search terms, storing and collating research. Formulating research questions. Private versus open access research and their strengths and limitations. Introduction to types of evidence and the hierarchy of evidence.

Day 3: Introduction to forms of bias in research including cognitive bias. Introduction to critical thinking. Introduction to placebo and nocebo.

Day 4: Introduction to epidemiology - understanding its relevance to nutrition, controversies and issues. Introduction to statistical concepts in epidemiology.

Day 5: Cohort studies - types of cohort studies, research uses of these studies, common statistical models employed. Key principles in critical appraisal for cohort studies.

Day 6: Case-control studies - types of design approaches, the questions these studies aim to address and their limitations. Key statstical models used and critical appraisal considerations.

Day 7: Cross-sectional and ecological studies - understanding their uses in practice, how to critically appraise them and the kinds of statistical models used.

Day 8: Case studies and Case series, animal and in-vitro evidence, in-silico research and making sense of genetic studies.

Day 9: Interventional studies - Randomised and non-randomised controlled trials, types of control models, the sociology and psychobiology of placebo and nocebo effects. Types of statistical models used. Key principles in critical research.

Day 10: Systematic reviews and meta-analyses - understanding the overlap and differences in these studies, their design, their limitations and key statistical models and visual representations of pooled data.

The dates for these events are:

EBMplay Level 1 (Live, Zoom-based Workshops)

EBMplay level 1 is a workshop-based course that transforms the theoretical concepts from the EBMtalks lecture-based level 1 course, into practice. Each level has a lecture-based course and a workshop-based course. EBMplay enables practitioners to apply the key concepts and clarify their understanding through practical guided examples.

Developing confidence translating clinical problems and questions into practical search strategies for finding research is an essential first step that many nutrition students and practitioners can find intimidating and frustrating. Real-world clinical problems and questions will frame each workshop to help demonstrate the search strategies needed. The first workshop will demonstrate via "follow-my-example" screen-sharing activities to help illustrate how to optimise search strategies.

At each subsequent workshop, this will be re-inforced and the search strategy used to find the specific studies that will provide the focus for critical exploration of the study, will be presented so that learners can try using this search strategy themselves independently to find the same study.

For 6 of the 8 workshops, the information for search strategy activities will be provided before the workshop. These independent search strategy activities will take only minutes to complete as all instructions and search terms will be provided for you. That way, questions can be asked for clarification at the start of each workshop.

Thinking critically about research and being able to translate it into practice is the most challenging aspect and this takes a practice. EBMplay workshops simplify and give relevance to this process, making the concepts easier to understand and remember - without the intimidation of having to do it all yourself when you are alone and faced with a clinical problem. These concepts need to be applied in practice in order to be fully appreciated.

In 6 of 8 workshops we will focus on specific types of studies that will be discussed critically.  Suggested (but not essential) pre-reading of a specific study example will be offered in advance, though full written resources will be provided after the workshop to reinforce learning for future consideration.

EBMtalks level is thorough but intense!  You are not alone - there is a learning curve that we all must go through when starting to engage more with research. The EBMplay workshops were designed to help get you over those hurdles and feel ready to apply them to your clinical practice, and prepare for the level 2 courses.

The 2-hour workshops will include plenty of time for questions and will run weekly. The lectures and workshops run parallel to each other to make it easier to apply the principles in practice through the workshops. 16 hours of CPD will be provided for the workshops. CPD logging and recognition is for the separate courses not the EBMtalks and play combined (ie. 25 hours and 16 hours, not 41 hours).  Attendance at all 8 sessions will be required for CPD certification, though if you do miss any sessions, you will be able to catch-up via the streaming version of the course online. 

The subjects we will cover each week include:

Week 1: Tuesday April 19th 2022, 10am.

Guided search strategy optimisation and demonstration.

Week 2: Tuesday April 26th 2022, 10am.

Understanding statistics in research: A non-mathematical approach.

Week 3: Tuesday May 3rd 2022, 10am.

Critical appraisal of Cohort studies.

Week 4: Tuesday May 10th 2022, 10am.

Thinking critically about Case-control studies.

Week 5: Tuesday May 17th 2022, 10am.

A critical comparison of Cross-sectional and Ecological research.

Week 6: Tuesday May 24th 2022, 10am.

Understanding the strenths and limitations of case-study and case-series research.

Week 7: Tuesday May 31st 2022, 10am.

Differentiating and appraising randomised controlled trials.

Week 8: Tuesday June 7th 2022, 10am.

Making sense of meta-analysis, network-analysis  and systematic review-based research.

EBMplay workshops will be recorded and available as recordings and are subject to copyright. Sharing any resources without explicit written consent will result in a non-refundable barring of access to remaining and future courses.

The course is purchased as a whole and cannot be purchased as individual sessions.