What is Evidence-Based Medicine?
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) requires the integration of the best research evidence with our clinical expertise and our patient’s unique values and circumstances.
Best Research Evidence
Clinically relevant research, sometimes from the basic sciences of medicine, but especially from patient-centered clinical research into the accuracy and precision of diagnostic tests (including the clinical examination), the power of prognostic markers, and the efficacy and safety of therapeutic, rehabilitative, and preventive strategies
Clinical Expertise
The ability to use our clinical skills and past experience to rapidly identify each patient’s unique health state and diagnosis, his or her individual risks and benefits of potential interventions/exposures/diagnostic tests, and his or her personal values and expectations. Moreover, clinical expertise is required to integrate evidence with patient values and circumstances.
Patient Values
The unique preferences, concerns and expectations that each patient brings to a clinical encounter and that must be integrated into shared clinical decisions if they are to serve the patient; and by patient circumstances we mean the patient's individual clinical state and the clinical setting.
For an overview of the EBM book, please visit our KT Books website:
https://ktbooks.ca/
