EBM notebook
Misunderstandings, misperceptions, and mistakes
1 University of Calgary
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
2 McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
3 University of Oxford
Oxford, UK
4 Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland, USA
5 McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Key Words: evidence-based medicine
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Discussions about evidence-based medicine (EBM) have engendered both positive and negative reactions from clinicians, researchers, and policymakers since the term was first coined in the early 1990s.1,2 These discussions were brought to the forefront again in a recent commentary by Dr Bernadine Healy, former director of National Institutes of Health, in U.S. News & World Report.3 She raised several issues that EBM practitioners and teachers face when advocating this model of care. Firstly, she stated that EBM practitioners advocate using the "best" evidence which is mostly taken from randomised trials and cost benefit studies. Secondly, she raised the issues of the interpretation of evidence for screening mammography and prostate specific antigen as examples where EBM has failed because EBM proponents did not advocate for these tests based on the available evidence. Thirdly, she likened the practice of EBM to a "straitjacket" or a cookbook approach in which both clinician
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