EBP is a problem-solving approach to clinical decision-making within a health care organization. It integrates the best available scientific evidence with the best available experiential (patient and practitioner) evidence. EBP considers internal and external influences on practice and encourages critical thinking in the judicious application of such evidence to the care of individual patients, a patient population, or a system (Newhouse, Dearholt, Poe, Pugh, & White, 2007).
Dearholt, Sandra L., and Dang, Deborah. Johns Hopkins Nursing Evidence-Based Practice : Models and Guidelines (2nd Edition).
Practice - Develop and refine your question and your team
Evidence - Search, appraise, summarize and synthesize internal and external sources of evidence.
Translation - Create and implement an action plan, evaluate outcomes, disseminate findings.
Centre Evidence Based Medicine
Assess the quality of systematic reviews, diagnostic studies and randomized controlled studies.
Descriptions of Levels of Evidence by clinical study category, and Grades of Recommendations
Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine 2011 Levels of Evidence
PDF Levels of Evidence Table
Asking Focused Clinical Questions
Use to help you build a PICO question.
The Well Built Clinical Question
From the Introduction to Evidence Based Practice from Duke University Medical Center and Health Sciences Library At UNC, Chapel Hill.
The "evidence pyramid" is often used to illustrate the levels of evidence in the literature. When beginning your search for evidence, begin at the highest possible tier.
Filtered information is "pre-appraised." This means that the content has been filtered to include studies and reviews that are of higher quality. Keep in mind that the amount of available literature and the number of problems covered gets smaller as you move up the pyramid.
Unfiltered information represents the original studies. These tiers may not contain studies of high quality and strong evidence, but they cover a much broader range of clinical problems and are much more available.