title: Integrating evidence-based practice and information literacy skills in teaching physical and occupational therapy students.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  To ensure that physical and occupational therapy graduates develop evidence-based practice (EBP) competencies, their academic training must promote EBP skills, such as posing a clinical question and retrieving relevant literature, and the information literacy skills needed to practice these EBP skills.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  This article describes the collaborative process and outcome of integrating EBP and information literacy early in a professional physical therapy and occupational therapy programme.
  
  
  METHODS
  The liaison librarian and a faculty member designed an instructional activity that included a lecture, workshop and assignment that integrated EBP skills and information literacy skills in the first year of the programme. The assignment was designed to assess students' ability to conduct a search independently.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The lecture and workshop were successful in their objectives, as 101 of the 104 students received at least 8 out of 10 points on the search assignment.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The teaching activities developed for the students in this course appear to have achieved the goal of teaching students the EBP research cycle so that they might begin to emulate it. The collaboration between the faculty member and the librarian was integral to the success of this endeavour. Future work will include the evaluation of students' long-term retention of information literacy objectives.
authors: Life Sciences Library, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada. jill.boruff@mcgill.ca
authors: Jill T
authors: JT
authors: Boruff
authors: Aliki
authors: A
authors: Thomas
mesh_terms: D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D003479:Curriculum; D003625:Data Collection; D004493:Education; D055317:Evidence-Based Practice / Q000379:methods*; D006281:Health Occupations / Q000193:education; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D007858:Learning; D007993:Libraries, Medical; D007998:Library Science / Q000379:methods*; D009788:Occupational Therapy / Q000193:education*; D026761:Physical Therapy Specialty / Q000193:education*; D011361:Professional Competence; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods*; D014481:United States