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How EBP Enable Healthcare Professionals to Provide Informed Decision

Dr. Nancy Agnes, Head,

Technical Operations, Pubrica

sales@pubrica.com

In-Brief

Leaning to the side of science, everyone

in the modern world wants to stick with

the based and the proven evidence. More

efforts by the researchers have been put

into the research and experiments to

vouch for the new practices and

discoveries. Evidence-Based Practice

(EBP) is one such methodology that helps

interlinking the various scientifically

proven for the welfare of an individual or

the society.

Keywords: Research evidence, purpose of

EBP, clinical decision-making, proven

scientific evidences, clinical experience,

randomized controlled trials

I. INTRODUCTION

Evidence Based Practice (EBP)

enables the proper delivery of knowledge

and updates in the health field. EBP can be

defined as the integrator that interlinks –

Clinical expertise, research evidence, and

data from the practice content and also

provides clinical literature review.

However, the purpose of EBP is to assist

in clinical decision-making for better

treatment of the patients.

The history of EBP starts in 1970.

Before the EBP, the health professionals

mostly tended to rely on other experienced

health professionals. Though the required

information is easily accessible and based,

there can be mistakes or prone to incorrect

leads pertaining to the health professionals'

age and memory. Sometimes, the clinical

experience would even be biased based

upon the varying past of the professionals.

II. REGULAR STEPS IN EBP

Firstly the ‘need’ is assumed by

considering the situations. The various

resources that are proven with scientific

evidence are acquired. Those resources

must justify their answers with strong

research work in the background.

Lastly, the collected data are

analyzed for relevance to the situation that

the health professional undergoes.

After all, with the data collected,

situations are handled appropriately.

Furthermore, their results are also recorded

for future studies.

III. FEATURE OF EBP

Unlike the regular guidelines, instructions,

recommendations, etc., EBP ensures better

clinical practice. EBP sounds like the

randomized controlled trials where the

treatments are investigated. All the

information required by the health

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professionals can be collected without

much strain.

IV. NECESSITY OF EBP

Not every patients’ conditions would be

easily treatable. Depending upon the

scenarios the treatments are altered to

ensure the stability of the patients.

Therefore, it is always important to

understand the scientific advantages of

proven scientific evidence.

Health professionals thought

process helps the most in acquiring the

knowledge from the proven scientific

evidences. Critical thinking on the

situations by introspecting - why this

happens? how does this happen? what

could be the way to get rid of this? In the

end, with the situation pushing them, they

start collecting the information from

various sources and start relating to the

situation.

For example, we shall consider a

situation where the patient is undergoing

bed rest after surviving a heart attack. Bed

rest after the heart attack is the

recommended one based upon the previous

knowledge of the clinical experts citing the

reason that the heart requires more rest and

must be kept away from emotional

imbalance. But the randomized controlled

trials show that bed rest could make

thromboembolism which is a dangerous

condition that could block the blood flow

via blood vessels.

V. QUALITY OF THE RESEARCH

PUBLICATION

There are plenty of sources available these

days and the most exceptional one is the

Internet where we collect more data such

articles, review chapters, etc. But the

quality of the content containing the

relevant information is the most important

thing to be considered before proceeding

to utilize the data. The collected data must

ensure validity, compliance, aftermath

effects.

VI. ADVANTAGES &

DISADVANTAGES OF EBP

Evidence-Based Practices possess their

advantages. EBP ensures the quality of

information that is provided to the

professionals. The professionals can

provide the appropriate treatment and

balance the other critical conditions of the

patients. The decisions made on the

evidence-based medicine can be believed

with more confidence.

Though EBP promises to be the

better reliable method while comparing

with others, there also exist certain

disadvantages within it. EBP needs more

accurate information and proven evidence

which may consume more time.

Considering the unexpected situations with

patients, a professional may not start the

research work to tackle the issues

immediately.

VII. CRITICISMS OF EBP

Though the qualitative research is the most

welcomed type of research. EBP is

criticized for relying more upon

quantitative research. Many professionals

around the globe question the definitions

of the term – Evidence in Evidence-Based

Practice. They argue that, based upon the

perception towards the problem, the

evidence can be both correct as well as

incorrect. Furthermore, clinical experience

is also given an equal part in creating the

evidence, thus questioning the certainty

and biasness.

VIII. CONCLUSION

Creating the evidence and connecting them

to the appropriate situations is not a one-

day matter. There involved a lot of

difficulties in experimentation, collection

of data from various sources, and bringing

them to the right situation at right time.

Apart from all, it keeps on updating itself

based on the new situations that arise after

new cases.

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