Methods: Students enrolled in a graduate, evidence based practice course completed a pretest/post-test survey assessing their knowledge, skills, and attitudes regarding various teaching strategies designed to enhance student scholarship and manuscript preparation. Students were assigned to work in small groups based on their clinical practice area and develop a relevant PICOT question. Keywords were identified, appropriate databases were queried, and articles meeting selected criteria were critically appraised. Students registered for the free web based citation manager and imported all selected references to their respective group folders. Once an appropriate journal was selected, students prepared a systematic review using the specified submission guidelines for that journal. The course faculty mentored each group, reviewed, edited, and submitted the manuscript as the corresponding author. Students also submitted an abstract of their findings as a group poster presentation to a selected national conference.
Results: A 12 item survey was developed to assess the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of student’s attitudes toward scholarship and ability to prepare and submit a manuscript based on a clinically relevant PICOT question. The tool was found to have a moderate degree of internal consistency with a Cronbach alpha 0.76. Seven of the 12 survey items addressing student confidence in appraising the literature, effective team work, and ability to translate research in to evidence based protocols were statistically significant (Paired t test, p < 0.05) There was no difference in scores related to future plans to submit posters and manuscripts or improved ability in using the web based citation manager. Of the seven manuscripts, five were submitted for publication, two were rejected, two were accepted for publication with minor revisions and one was accepted pending major revisions. All of the abstracts were accepted by national conferences for poster presentation.
Conclusions: Employing a small group approach with faculty guidance can enhance student manuscript preparation and publication. There were some technical issues with the web based citation manager that limited its usefulness. Major obstacles were found during the revision process for those manuscripts originally accepted due to time restraints and faculty work load issues. Submitting only one exemplar manuscript for publication and focusing on poster development and presentation is a more strategic and effective learning strategy in this setting.