Though advances in medical science have created improved therapies, often these are not widely provided throughout the health-care system. Also, there is growing recognition of the lack of safety in health-care delivery. The development of evidence-based, best practice, national guidelines has been encouraged to reduce unnecessary variation in care and for improving quality. Adoption of guideli...

The "evidence-based medicine" (EBM) paradigm is centered on the concept of "best evidence" and clinical studies based on this approach are more likely to be considered by physicians in their practice. In this paper we describe an ontology representing the concepts involved in evidence-based medicine and meta-analysis and show how an ontological approach can be applied both for revisiting EBM co...

Shared decision-making (SDM) invokes the bidirectional communication between physicians and patients required to involve the patient's preference in the eventual treatment choice. This paper will explain what SDM is, why it is important, and how it is performed in clinical practice. It is an essential part of evidence-based medicine, as it helps determine whether the available evidence on the p...

[This corrects the article on p. 105 in vol. 18, PMID: 28116018.].

This second article of the series "An Overview of Research Designs Relevant to Nursing" presents qualitative research designs. Phenomenological, ground theory, ethnography, narrative inquiry, and other related qualitative-related research methodologies are described. In addition, the importance of qualitative research as groundwork for quantitative studies is discussed. This link between qualit...

There is increasing evidence that outcomes of health care differ by patient characteristics, such as gender and ethnicity. If evidence-based medicine is to improve quality of care for all patients, it is essential to take this diversity into account when designing clinical studies. So far, this notion has mainly been translated into recommendations for including minority populations in trials. ...

BACKGROUND As the overall evidence for the effectiveness of teaching of evidence based medicine (EBM) is not strong, and the impact of cultural and societal influences on teaching method is poorly understood, we undertook a randomised-controlled trial to test the effectiveness and learning satisfaction with two different EBM teaching methods (usual teaching vs. problem based learning (PBL)) for...

This letter considers the main challenges that people with rare diseases and their families face: delay in diagnosis, lack of appropriate support and information, and impaired access to treatment. The differences in medical experience between a patient with a rare disease and one with a common one are made through the use of a real-life example: the diagnosis of leiomyosarcoma received by my mo...

BACKGROUND Previous studies report various degrees of agreement between self-perceived competence and objectively measured competence in medical students. There is still a paucity of evidence on how the two correlate in the field of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM). We undertook a cross-sectional study to evaluate the self-perceived competence in EBM of senior medical students in Malaysia, and ass...

Evidence based medicine (EBM) puts forward a hierarchy of evidence for informing therapeutic decisions. An unambiguous interpretation of how to apply EBM’s hierarchy has not been provided in the clinical literature. However, as much as an interpretation is provided proponents suggest a categorical interpretation. The categorical interpretation holds that all the results of randomised trials alw...