Evidence-Based Health Care: Panning for Gold

Presented by Ann McKibbon, Associate Professor, Dept. of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University.

Two one day sessions, May 2-3, 2002
Arts and Administration Building,
Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL

Learn the principles of evidence-based health care, an approach to clinical practice in which clinicians base their decisions and actions on appropriate evidence from health care research literature, in addition to clinical expertise and patient circumstances. Discover the research approaches to therapy, diagnosis, etiology, and prognosis of medical conditions, for original studies, systematic review articles, and clinical practice guidelines.

Course Outline

Day 1 – Thursday May 2, 2002

This will involve looking at what Evidence Based Health Care is, how health care research is used in clinical care and reported in the literature and then switch into the areas of therapy, diagnosis, etiology, and prognosis, clinical practice guidelines and systematic reviews. We will look at each area, how research in this area is unique, what makes a “good study” that clinicians can use in patient care with confidence, how each is indexed in the literature (and by extension, how they can be retrieved), and do some basic retrieval exercises in class.

Day 2 – Friday May 3, 2002

The second day will have two distinct half-day sessions.

Session 1 will be on using the literature itself. We will take a specific article, assess its strengths in the context of a clinical situation, determine what the results of the article are, and “make” a clinical decision.

Session 2 will concentrate on ‘special topics’ such as qualitative studies, economic evaluations, decision analyses, and clinical prediction guides (e.g., CAGE questionnaire for diagnosing drinking problems or the Ottawa Ankle Rules to assess if an x-ray is needed in ankle injuries). Topics can be customized to meet participant preferences.

All three sessions are stand alone–one could attend any or all and not feel that they had missed something or feel that they had sat through a good bit of the material before.

Course Conductor

Ann McKibbon, MLS, BSc, Associate Professor, Dept. of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University Ann is well known internationally for her expertise in searching and reviewing the medical literature. She has worked with the Evidence Based Medicine working group at McMaster for many years and was in charge of producing the ACP Journal Club, Evidence-Based Medicine, Evidence-Based Nursing, and Evidence-Based Mental Health. She has written two books on Evidence Based Medicine and has taught over 60 courses in EBM for librarians and health professionals. Ann is currently on leave from McMaster while working on a PhD in Medical Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh.