Nursing: Getting Started

Evidence-Based Practice is:

the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. The practice of evidence-based medicine requires the integration of individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research and our patient's unique values and circumstances.

-from the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine

Evidence based practice includes five steps:

Step 1: Converting the need for information into an answerable question

Step 2: Finding the best evidence to address that question

Step 3: Evaluating the evidence for its validity, impact, and applicability

Step 4: Integrating the evidence with clinical expertise and the patient's unique biology, values and circumstances

Step 5: Evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of the process

More resources for steps 1 through 3 are in the tabs above. Steps 4 and 5 are up to you as a health care provider.
Strauss, S. E. (2005). Evidence-based medicine : How to practice and teach EBM (3rd ed.). New York: Elsevier/Churchill Livingstone.

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