Department of Family Medicine
Evidence-Based Medicine
What is Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM)?
"EBM is the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best
evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients...integrating
individual clinical expertise with the best available external evidence from
systematic research" (Sackett, Richardson, Rosenberg, & Haynes, 1997).
What is the problem? Why is there a need for EBM? Don’t we already practice
medicine fairly uniformly based on a common fund of evidence?
No. Large variations currently exist among MDs/DOs in the integration of patient
values into clinical behavior and in the rates with which we provide
interventions (Weatherall, 1994).
Bottom line: we are now often practicing medicine based on clinical judgment
that is not well informed by the best evidence of medical research—a slippery
slope to diminished effectivity and/or compromised competence.
Why stress EBM as a solution?
New types of evidence are now being generated which (when we know and
understand them) create frequent, major changes in the way we care for our
patients, thus making us more effective physicians.
Although we need this new evidence daily, we usually fail to get it.
Because we don’t get the evidence, both our up-to-date knowledge and our
clinical performance deteriorate with time.
Trying to overcome clinical entropy through traditional CME programs
doesn’t improve our clinical performance.
A different approach to clinical learning has been shown to be effective in
keeping practitioners up to date: EBM.
References
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Sackett, D.L., Richardson, W.S., Rosenberg, W., Haynes, R.B. 1997.
Evidence-Based Medicine: How to Practice and Teach EMB, New York: Churchill Livingstone
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Weatherall, D.J. 1994. The Unhumanity of Medicine. British Medical
Journal, (308) 1671-72.
Other EBM Sites
Basic Concepts and Terminology
Study Design
Biostatistics and Prevention
Success in Five Steps
Teaching EBM
EBM Resources
Department of Family Medicine Evidence for
Health Promotion Newsletter
Contact Information
Dr. Peggy J. Wagner
Research Director
Email: pwagner@mcg.edu
(706) 721-7589 |
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