Evidence based information
Evidence based practice
Evidence based practice is the provision of health care guided by the integration of the best available scientific or research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values.
This approach allows health care practitioners to critically assess evidence such as research studies, clinical guidelines, and other information resources in order to correctly identify the clinical problem and apply the most high-quality intervention.
Finding evidence
Filtered (secondary) information
The best sources for filtered information are specialised Library databases that provide access to evidence based systematic reviews, summaries, recommendations and clinical guidelines, including:
- Cochrane Library
- JBI EPD (via Ovid) [formerly Joanna Briggs Institute EPD]
- View all databases for finding filtered information.
You can often find clinical guidelines and recommendations freely available on the web from government websites and professional associations. A key Australian example is:
- Australia's Clinical Practice Guidelines portal (an initiative by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)
Unfiltered (primary) information sources
Good sources of unfiltered information are journal articles from peer-reviewed journals. This is where researchers publish the results of their research studies. Other sources include preprints, conference proceedings and theses.
You can find journal articles using Library Search or use subject specialised journal article databases, such as nursing databases and psychology databases.
Key databases for finding health related journal articles include:
