American Family Physician’s Series on Finding Evidence and Putting It into Practice

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If family physicians don’t keep asking and answering clinical questions, their knowledge base will grow increasingly out of step with current practice, and their patients will suffer. But it isn’t enough to find just any answer; it should reflect the best patient oriented evidence, have the potential to change practice for the better, and improve important clinical outcomes. There is a rich body of literature advising physicians on how to ask and answer questions. Too often, though, it has encouraged physicians to focus on PubMed searches and the original research literature, a time consuming and sometimes frustrating process.
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I propose a different skill set that prioritizes making the practicing family physician an informed consumer of the secondary literature (e.g., evidence-based guidelines, systematic reviews, critical appraisals, validated decision-support tools. The physician must become an expert at assessing the quality of an information source. Does the information focus on patient-oriented outcomes? Is it truly evidence based, or does it merely have a lot of references? Is it free of industry or other special interest bias? Does it summarize information in a way that makes it easy to access and apply at the point of care?

Ebell M. AFP’s Series on Finding Evidence and Putting It into Practice. AF. Am Fam Physician. 2009;79(1):7-8.

Trata-se de uma série de 6 artigos dos quais já foram publicados quatro.

• Keeping Up with the Medical Literature: How to Set Up a SystemShaughnessy AF. Am Fam Physician. 2009; 79(1):25-26
• How to find answers to clinical questionsM H Ebell. Am Fam Physician. 2009;79(4):293-296
• Diagnosis: Making the Best Use of Medical Data
  M H Ebell. Am Fam Physician. 2009;79(6):478-480
• Evaluating and Understanding Articles About Treatment
  Shaughnessy AF. Am Fam Physician. 2009;79(8):668-670.