Roadshows

We also organise “closer to home” community small group drug therapy educational sessions which are typically done by 2-4 members of our group. As with our annual Drug Therapy Course, 2/3 of the attendees are family physicians and numbers range from 5 to 70 depending on the location. These community-based, drug therapy oriented sessions are aimed at family physicians, internists, other interested specialists, pharmacists and nurses responsible for patient drug therapy. The purpose is to provide an introduction to evidence based medicine, learning the basics of interpreting research findings, and to provide “evidence-based” therapeutic evaluation as a balance to “marketing-based” information. We spend a lot of time challenging beliefs and provide tools which allow clinicians the ability to include patient values in the decision process rather than strictly relying on guidelines. For example, we would provide clinicians with what the best evidence suggests is the benefit and harm of a particular therapy and encourage clinicians to discuss this with patients rather than focusing on specific blood pressure, cholesterol or glucose levels as the endpoint.