Cochrane Iberoamerica has launched "Las claves de la evidencia en salud", a Cochrane course in Spanish. This interactive course is an introduction to Evidence Based Medicine, clinical trials and Cochrane evidence. It is designed for healthcare consumers (patients, care givers, family members), policy makers and members of the healthcare team. The course, estimated to last about four hours, is free and only requires a Cochrane account to enroll (registration to the Cochrane account is also free).
The learning is interactive, with reading material, videos, audios, quizzes and a variety of ways to test what has been learned. In addition, links to other resources are included in case you want to continue learning and deepen your knowledge about a particular topic. You will be guided through the modules by the personal learning journey of ‘Elena’, a fictional consumer. The modules are presented in the form of a story, but you are free to skip this and explore the learning in any way you choose.
The course has been co-produced by healthcare consumers, researchers and specialists from Cochrane's Central Executive Team, with input from a range of experts in their fields, and translated and adapted into Spanish by the Iberoamerican Cochrane Center from its original in English (Cochrane Evidence Essentials).
"We are convinced that this course is a relevant and user-friendly contribution to disseminate to the Spanish-speaking public how we know if a treatment works and what is the process to generate scientific evidence for health care. At the Iberoamerican Cochrane Center we translate all Cochrane systematic reviews into Spanish and this new course in Spanish is an ideal addition to improve the use of all this evidence in health care", says Gerard Urrútia, director of the Iberoamerican Cochrane Center and the Iberoamerican Cochrane Network.
"We are going to disseminate this course in Spain and in the other 18 countries that are part of the Iberoamerican Cochrane Network as a first gateway to learning the key elements of evidence in health," adds Urrútia. "Our target audience is not only health care users, but also all those who are not familiar with systematic reviews and need to make healthcare decisions, including healthcare professionals. These modules will also support the numerous resources and dissemination activities that we produce for the Spanish-speaking public, such as Nutrimedia or Cochrane responde."
At the moment, four of the five course modules are available in Spanish (the fifth will be translated shortly and is currently only available in English). The estimated completion time is 30 minutes for the first module and 45 minutes for the remaining four modules.