BACKGROUND Two of the key steps in evidence based medicine (EBM) are being able to construct a clinical question and effectively search the literature to source relevant information. No evidence currently exists that informs whether such skills should be taught to medical students during their pre-clinical years, or delivered to include both the pre-clinical and clinical years of study. This is...

BACKGROUND There is limited research on the use of evidence to inform policy-making in the Pacific. This study aims to identify and describe factors that facilitate or limit the use of evidence in food-related policy-making in the Health and Agriculture Ministries in Fiji. METHODS Semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted with selected policy-makers in two government ministries t...

background and purpose: health indices, regarding to their role in the development of society, are one of the most important indices at national level. success of national development programs is largely dependent on the establishment of appropriate goals at the health sector, among which access to healthcare facilities is an essential requirement. the aim of this study was to examine the dispa...

background mri is a new and expensive diagnostic technology, which has been used increasingly all over the world. low back pain is a worldwide prevalent disorder and mri technique is one of the several ways to diagnose it. this paper aims to identify the appropriateness of lumbar spine mri prescriptions in shiraz teaching hospitals using standardized rand appropriateness method (ram) criteria i...

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background the inclusion of cost-effectiveness data, as a basis for priority setting rankings, is a distinguishing feature in the formulation of the swedish national guidelines. guidelines are generated with the direct intent to influence health policy and support decisions about the efficient allocation of scarce healthcare resources. certain medical conditions may be given higher priority ran...

In an increasingly complex world of interrelated problems many governments have tried to modernise their institutional structures and the ways in which they go about making policy. In the UK and elsewhere this has been most apparent in the growing emphasis given to evidence-based policy making in contrast to faith-based approaches and the conviction politics of earlier periods. Much of the deba...

There is growing recognition, particularly in the areas of illicit drug policy and HIV prevention, that policy-makers are in many instances implementing suboptimal programs and services because they are not basing their decisions on the best available scientific evidence. One notable example where a policy-making body has failed to use scientific evidence to inform policy is the Canadian federa...

The objective of this empirical study was to understand the perspectives and attitudes of policy-makers towards the use and impact of research in the health sector in low- and middle-income countries. The study used data from 83 semi-structured, in-depth interviews conducted with purposively selected policy-makers at the national level in Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Malawi, Oman and Singapore. The ...