Southern Collaboration in Research to Impact Prescription of Therapeutics (SCRIPTS), is a project aimed to”help prescribers enhance their ability to evaluate drug related information to improve their prescribing practices and describe proper prescribing practices to improve quality of patient care”. It is sponsored by University of Alabama at Birmingham.
In this module they teach us the basics of how to read, understand and consider the results of a drug clinical trial.
Outline of the topics covered in this Evidence Based Medicine PowerPoint:
- Selection of unbiased papers (check for financial relationships between the author and the manufacturer).
- Analize the title of the study: interesting? useful? relevant?.
- Abstract: introduction, methods, results, conclusion.
- Don’t skip the methods and results section.
- Guidelines to distinguish useful versus useless results.
- Validity of clinical trials: comparation, randomization, blinding.
- Equivalence and noninferiority trials: definition and comparison.
- Systematic reviews.
In a related video, you can also learn about the ethics of clinical trials in India.