Practising Evidence-based Primary Care

The practice of evidence-based medicine is a process of life-long, self-directed, problem-based learning. Caring for each patient creates the need for clinically important information about diagnosis, therapy and other clinical and healthcare issues. This workbook is designed to help clinicians develop and improve these skills, by showing how to: convert information into answerable questions; track down the best evidence with maximum efficiency; make best use of the variety of primary and secondary evidence; critically appraise evidence for validity, importance and usefulness; integrate the appraisal with clinical expertise and apply the results; and how to evaluate the practitioner's own performance.
Focusing on the special situation of GPs and the whole primary care team, this flexible approach offers a clear, concise tool for everyone involved in postgraduate and vocational training. It contains papers, self-evaluation sheets and relevant extracts from journals. Tutor's notes are also included. Session 1:
Section 1
Part A: Therapy (diarrhoea)
Part B: Asking answerable clinical questions

Section 2
Part A: Therapy (myocardial infarction)
Part B: Asking answerable clinical questions

Session 2:
Part A: Diagnosis (fever in children)
Part B: Introduction to the CATMaker software

Session 3:
Part A: Prognosis (stroke)
Part B: Searching the evidence-based journals

Session 4:
Part A: Harm (hormone replacement therapy)
Part B: Searching the primary literature

Session 5:
Part A. Systematic review (acute respiratory infection)
Part B: Searching the Cochrane Library

Session 6:
Part A: Presentations
Part B: Searching for evidence on the WWW

Session 7:
Part A: Presentations
Part B: Feedback and celebration

Appendix
Glossary of terms
Review of study designs

Extracts from Evidence-based Medicine

Tutor's Guide

Tim Lancaster is the author of Practising Evidence-based Primary Care, published by Wiley. The practice of evidence-based medicine is a process of life-long, self-directed, problem-based learning. Caring for each patient creates the need for clinically important information about diagnosis, therapy and other clinical and healthcare issues. This workbook is designed to help clinicians develop and improve these skills, by showing how to: convert information into answerable questions; track down the best evidence with maximum efficiency; make best use of the variety of primary and secondary evidence; critically appraise evidence for validity, importance and usefulness; integrate the appraisal with clinical expertise and apply the results; and how to evaluate the practitioner's own performance.
Focusing on the special situation of GPs and the whole primary care team, this flexible approach offers a clear, concise tool for everyone involved in postgraduate and vocational training. It contains papers, self-evaluation sheets and relevant extracts from journals. Tutor's notes are also included.