NOVEL METHODS OF TEACHING EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH: EXPERIENCE FROM THE FIELD DURING THE EBOLA OUTBREAK

Evidence based medicine (EBM) is a critical professional skill for future health care workers in the European Union (EU) such as medicine, nursing, pharmacy or medical and biomedical sciences. This paper describes a series of novel methods for teaching EBM and public health that have been created at De Montfort University (DMU, UK) during the academic year 2015/16 for biomedical scientists and academics that volunteered to work at the Public Health England (PHE) mobile laboratories built in Sierra Leone (West Africa) during the Ebola outbreak. The Ebola virus disease (EVD) primarily affected three countries in West Africa: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. According to Ebola Situation Reports from the World Health Organisation (27th March 2016), there have been more than 14,000 cases of possible EVD in Sierra Leone, and 3956 people have died due to the virus in this country. During 2015, we worked as biomedical scientists at different PHE mobile laboratories in Sierra Leone for more than 4 weeks throughout 2015. The main task performed at those labs were collecting and managing highly hazardous clinical samples (blood, sputum, semen, vaginal swabs and breast milk) to diagnose Ebola and other infectious diseases, such as Malaria, to try to prevent the spread of Ebola during the outbreak. We have used different guidance and information from the UK National Health Service and PHE, together with our experience from the field at Sierra Leone, to create a series of workshops, tutorials and presentations to improve students studying human health courses in terms of skills, knowledge and attitude towards EBM and public health. We have designed workshops by integrating and adopting different pedagogies such as Problem Based Learning and peer teaching. DMU students needed to develop an applicable intervention programme to protect human health in the aftermath of a pandemic. Some of our presentations are accessible through the Internet, and a comprehensive overview of the materials and experience created are given in this paper. A series of new practical teaching sessions based on our experience at Sierra Leona, which will be incorporated into the next academic course 2016/17 at DMU are also discussed in this paper. EBM might enable human health students to become more efficient health workers that rely on evidence in order to protect the public from pandemics and similar global health threats.