Evidence Based Medicine
Step 3 - Appraising the evidence
Once you have found articles, which potentially may
serve as the evidence for answering your question, you must appraise it.
Appraising the evidence can be the most time consuming part of
evidence-based medicine. One alternative is to look for sources of
pre-assessed evidence. Journal of Family Practice POEMs or the American
College of Physicians Journal Club reviews selected articles and
does the work of appraising for you.
The other alternative is to do it yourself. Starting
in 1993,
Users'
Guides to the Medical Literature has been published as a series in
JAMA. This guides are intended for use by physicians to help them
evaluate the medical literature. While four of the guides have been
condensed for your use below as review sheets, the series in it's
entirety is available at the
Centres
for Health Evidence.
If you need to appraise the evidence, it is best to
use a worksheet, which will help focus you on the pertinent questions
that need to be answered. Blank worksheets for the four most common
types of articles that physicians read are also given below.
The worksheets are in
format so you must have
Adobe Acrobat Reader
to view them. A free version of Adobe Acrobat Reader is available
for download at their
website.
Review sheets on How to Appraise Articles
Blank Worksheets
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