Evidence-Based Practice

EBP Literature

DynaMed Plus summarizes and synthesizes "the best available evidence" to answer clinical questions. Provides up-to-date, evidence-based information with links to the original studies. Literature cited has been evaluated for "clinical relevance and scientific validity."

Cochrane Reviews. A regularly updated collection of in-depth, systematic reviews that synthesize and evaluate the research literature on clinical questions.

TRIP Database . A free clinical search engine that helps clinicians identify the best available evidence with which to answer clinical questions.

Clinical Guidelines

U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Recommendations for Primary Care Practice . "The USPSTF was convened to rigorously evaluate clinical research in order to assess the merits of preventive measures, including screening tests, counseling, immunizations, and preventive medications."

Searching the Journal Literature for Studies

Both CINAHL and MEDLINE provide options to limit your searches to evidence-based literature. If you use the PubMed version of MEDLINE, there's a special "clinical queries" tool that can be a fast and easy way to identify evidence-based studies.

EBP Web Sites

CEBM Center for Evidence-Based Medicine Established in Oxford in 1995 as the first of several centers. "Our broad aim is to develop, teach and promote evidence-based health care and provide support and resources to anyone who wants to make use of them."

Evidence-Based Nursing . A syllabus and case examples from the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Toronto.

AHRQ Evidence-Based Reports . Another useful website from the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Books

Selected Titles Found through the LibCat

Essentials of nursing research : appraising evidence for nursing practice / Denise F. Polit, Cheryl Tatano Beck. General Collection RT 81.5 .P63 2010

Evidence-based nursing : the research-practice connection / Sarah Jo Brown. General Collection RT81.5 .B82 2018

Fast facts for evidence-based practice in nursing : implementing EBP in a nutshell / Maryann Godshall. 2016. Electronic book.

Johns Hopkins nursing evidence-based practice implementation and translation / edited by Stephanie Poe and Kathleen White. 2010. Electronic book.

Johns Hopkins nursing evidence-based practice : model and guidelines / [edited by] Deborah Dang, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, Sandra L. Dearholt, MS, RN, NEA-BC. General Collection RT42 .J594 2018

Find additional books in the library's LibCat by entering "evidence-based nursing" in the search box.

Surveillance Tools

Evidence Alerts from DynaMed Plus and McMaster University's Health Information Research Unit

The Medical Letter . You can sign up for RSS feeds or email alerts.

Appraisal Tools

Appraise practice guidelines using resources at the AGREE Enterprise website. AGREE stands for "Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation."

Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine's Appraisal tools webpage provides information on study designs, critical appraisal sheets, examples, and helpful software downloads.

CASP International Network : Growing out of Britain's Critical Appraisal Skills Programme, this international network provides resources that help practitioners evaluate the following types of research articles:

  • systematic reviews
  • randomized controlled trials
  • qualitative research
  • economic evaluation studies
  • cohort studies
  • case control studies
  • diagnostic test studies

Also of interest, the Institute of Medicine has published Finding What Works in Health Care: Standards for Systematic Reviews . It's a consensus report that recommends "standards for systematic reviews of the comparative effectiveness of medical or surgical interventions."

The Institute of Medicine has also published Clinical Practice Guidelines We Can Trust , which discusses eight standards for developing "rigorous, trustworthy clinical practice guidelines."