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Evidence Based Medicine

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Making decisions about the care of patients is important in every health profession. According to the journal of Academy of Medical Sciences of Bosnia and Herzegovina, “Evidence Based Medicine integrates clinical experience and patient values with the best available research information.” It increases the use of clinical research in clinical decision making. The practice of EBM is important for learning information about a patient’s diagnosis, prognosis, or any other health care issues. Evidence based medicine and the scientific method are related in certain ways. There are four different levels of evidence, known as systematic review, randomized controlled trials, cohort studies, and case reports. The scientific method has five steps, which …show more content…

Observations and experiments are required for each level. Systematic review is “the application of scientific strategies that limit bias by systematic assembly, critical appraisal, and synthesis of all relevant studies on a specific topic.” Systematic reviews offer strong evidence. “For example, for a given research question, high-quality systematic reviews including high-quality trials would yield stronger inferences than systematic reviews of lower quality trials.” A randomized controlled trial is a study design that randomly assigns individuals into an experimental group or control group. When the individuals get divided into groups, one of the groups uses the treatment being tested. “The experiences of the other group of people provide control or comparison of the data.” This makes it possible to see what effects the treatment actually has. These studies work well with drug trials. Cohort studies are a type of medical research used to investigate the causes of disease. In retrospective cohort studies, researches look at data that already exists and try to identify the risk factors for a certain condition. In prospective cohort studies, researchers come up with a question to form a hypothesis about the potential cause of the disease. They observe a group of people over a long period of time. A case report is a report of the symptoms, signs, diagnosis, and treatment of a patient. According to the Journal of the …show more content…

Some physicians found that when they used EBM they lacked knowledge and skills in searching and applying evidence. Some physicians find a problem when it comes to the statistics. “The problem is when it comes into statistics we get scared; I’ll get stuck and can’t proceed any longer.” I think that EBM is a great solution in the health profession. Evidence based medicine is for when one wants to find the whole answer to a condition. Personally, if I was the patient it would make be able to feel more confident about figuring out what my condition is all

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