"Evidence-based medicine…is the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. The practice of evidence-based medicine means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research." (Sackett, 1997)
Evidence-based practice has become increasingly important in all fields of medicine. An evidence-based practice is a treatment methodology or procedure that has been tested, studied, and proven effective--not just accepted blindly as a standard practice.This section of the Libguide will help you to understand the steps of implementing evidence-based practice and for finding pertinent articles and research.
Watch this 15 minute Ted Talk to get a very comprehensive view of the dangers of the failure to carefully evaluate medical research.
Conducting research on evidence-based practices always begins by considering a problem or patient condition, evaluating the types of treatments or interventions currently available, comparing those interventions, and studying outcomes. Use the acronym PICO to help remember the steps for conducting a search for evidence-based practices:
P = Patient or Problem
I = Intervention
C = Comparison Intervention (if you want to compare different types of interventions)
O = Outcomes
The Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine (CEBM) includes additional information about formulating good research questions related to implementing an evidence based practice.
Do you need a general introduction to evidence-based practice? Here are some tutorials that define the term and provide models for implementing evidence-based practice:
This tutorial from the LaTrobe University Library goes over how to use PICO to help generate a research question.
Introduction to Evidence Based Medicine
This tutorial was created by the Boston University Alumni Medical Library to define EBM and the steps in the EBM process.
This tutorial comes from the University of Minnesota and is another excellent resource for learning the basics of evidence-based practice. The tutorial is split into five sections and includes case examples.