Student Report - EBM Exercise

What is evidence based medicine?

"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, D. L., Rosenberg, W. M., Gray, J. A., Haynes, R. B., & Richardson, W. S. (1996). Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn’t. BMJ : British Medical Journal, 312(7023), 71–72.

There are five basic steps in the EBM process.  For this exercise, we will be focusing on the first three.

1. Ask - construct a searchable question
2. Acquire - search the literature to find an answer to the question
3. Appraise - critically evaluate the literature for quality, strength of evidence, and relevance to your question
4. Apply - use the information you have found to inform your clinical decisions
5. Assess - evaluate the impact of this decision and start the process again if needed