Opportunities

Educational Opportunities

Our educational programme

The key objectives of our educational programme are:

• to help practitioners continually question and evaluate their practice to ensure that it is based on the best available evidence. This requires skills to appraise and apply evidence to your own practice together with the skills required to change, monitor and evaluate practice.

• to provide continuing educational input to practitioners using these skills to solve real practice problems in their workplace.

Opportunities within the Centre

Activities of the Centre so far have generated considerable demand for further training opportunities. The present and planned educational programmes are outlined here. For details of forthcoming courses, workshops and seminars, see our events page. Please address specific enquiries to Dr Ruth Gilbert (Director) and general enquiries to Lucinda Cash-Gibson (Research Assistant).

Courses
External Courses
Tutor Training
Teaching Resources
Setting up an Evidence-Based Course
MSc Modules in Evidence-Based Child Health

Courses

How to Practice Evidence-Based Care for Children

This three-day course is held in London in May/June each year. Thirty-six places are available for health/social services professionals (eg: doctors, nurses, PAMs, psychologists, social workers, managers) who want to become more efficient at using the best available research evidence in their day to day decisions about patients and clients. The course structure consists of plenary sessions, small group problem-solving and critical appraisal sessions based on clinical and policy scenarios in child health/psycho/social care, and practical sessions on how to search the scientific literature.

Plenary sessions include:

• Framing questions
• Diagnosis
• Systematic Reviews
• Study Design
• Statistics 

Small Group Appraisal Sessions include:

• Using evidence in day to day decisions
• Interventions
• Diagnosis
• Systematic Reviews
• Searching the scientific literature

Key features are an emphasis on multiprofessional group learning, a high tutor-participant ratio, opportunities throughout the course for 'hands-on' access to the Internet and scientific literature, and techniques for prioritising information needs and dealing with uncertainty.

View a recent course programme (Word file 54KB) (Word document, 77 KB).

Similar courses are held in Edinburgh at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and in Ireland / Northern Ireland (see our events page for further details).

External Courses

We have designed evidence-based courses for health practitioners overseas working in collaboration with host convenors and local tutors.  The long term aim of this programme of work is to support groups in other countries to establish their own evidence-based courses.  We have run courses in Brunei, Kuwait, South Africa and India.  Our most current external course is taking place in Chandigarh, India from 14-16 March 2007 (please see our events page for more details) . Courses can be arranged that focus on evidence-based practice in general or more specifically on evidence-based child health. Please contact Lucinda Cash-Gibson, for further details.   

Tutor Training

We operate an ongoing programme of tutor training at the Centre for Evidence-Based Child Health. Potential tutors of evidence-based practice are encouraged to attend our courses and workshops which offer the opportunity for participants to advance their appraisal skills and understanding of evidence-based practice in preparation for teaching evidence-based practice. (Other workshops on how to teach Evidence-Based Practice are available at the Unit for Evidence-Based Policy and Practice in London and Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine in Oxford). New tutors are then offered the opportunity to work with experienced tutors during our courses with support provided through preparatory meetings and evaluation before and during the course. Ongoing support is provided through access to the centres teaching resources including a database of scenarios and tutor notes. If you would like to train as a tutor, please contact Lucinda Cash-Gibson, for further details.

Teaching Resources

A database of teaching materials is available for those people setting up their own local seminars and workshops in evidence-based child health. The database contains scenarios, references and tutor notes relevant to child health which can be downloaded free of charge.

Teaching scenarios and references relevant to child health can also be downloaded from the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine website: http://cebm.net.

Teaching materials at both sites have been built up by contributors from around the country. Any comments or further materials are welcome.

Setting up an Evidence-Based Course

Support to develop external evidence-based child health courses for practitioners can be provided. Drawing on the expertise of staff at the centre in running evidence-based child health courses we can provide training for tutors, administrative support to set up the courses, programme development, teaching materials, and the provision of experienced tutors at the initial courses to work with local tutors. Successful satellite courses have been set up in Hackney (Community Trust), Edinburgh and Ireland who continue to run their own evidence-based child health courses. If you are thinking of setting up an Evidence-Based Course please contact Lucinda Cash-Gibson, for further details.

MSc Modules in Evidence-Based Child Health

Evidence-Based Child Health modules taught by members of the Centre for Evidence-Based Child Health form part of the MSc Child Public Health and the MSc Clinical Paediatrics at the Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital.  Please follow the links for further details of these courses.

Please visit the jobs section of our website for the latest ICH job and PhD vacancies