EBP/outcome measures

[Cristina Roy]

Hi Christina,
Ive recently completed the lecture portion of the exam. I am struggling a little with the outcomes measures and EBP part of each lecture, do you think it is best to read each article? Or should I just have an idea of what research has found effective? Should I be memorizing specific studies (this likely wouldn’t be worthwhile).I just want to manage my time effectively and focus on what I need.
Thanks for any feedback!
Cristina

[Chrissy Durrough Lugge]

Hi Cristina,
I agree – I don’t think it’s worthwhile to memorize specific studies. Understanding the big concepts and general recommendations is more important. Individual studies are included in the lectures to review specific interventions from the body of literature. If you read the associated articles, I would spend most of your time on the introductions and conclusions while just skimming through the methodology sections. Additionally, taking a look at systematic reviews is likely a more effective use of your time than digging too deep into specific studies, as review articles can be applied to a larger population and are more likely to be captured by the NCS exam. Hope this is helpful!
Chrissy

[Grace Bhalla]

Do you have any strategies on how to learn the EDGE outcome measures? Is it necessary to memorize all the recommended measures for each setting? Also, one of the interviewees mentioned learning recommended measures by “4s”. Could you please explain?

[Chrissy Durrough Lugge]

Hi Grace,
I would recommend at least being familiar with the highly recommended measures for each diagnosis and knowing the Core Outcome Measures very well. Knowing the NCS is a multiple choice exam, I think it is helpful to generally know what a measure assesses (identify most appropriate outcome measures for a certain case), the minimum and maximum scores (to interpret a given score), and any critical cut-off scores (like falls risk). The Outcome Measures Master List on the course homepage will hopefully provide most of this information.

I don’t have any novel strategies for learning the measures. When I was studying for the NCS exam, I took a block of time and reviewed the highly recommended outcome measures for each diagnosis. I remember doing this pretty close to my exam date because some of it was memorizing numbers and I didn’t want to give myself too much time to forget them.

Elise mentioned knowing all the outcome measures with ratings of 4. The EDGE Task Forces use a rating scale of 1-4 for each outcome measure:
4= highly recommended; the outcome measure has excellent psychometric properties and clinical utility
3= recommended; the outcome measure has good psychometric properties and good clinical utility
2= reasonable to use, but limited study in target group; the outcome measure has good or excellent psychometric properties and clinical utility in a related population, but insufficient study in target population to support higher recommendation.
1= do not recommend; the outcome measure has poor psychometric properties and/or poor clinical utility

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.

Chrissy

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