Assignment
In the past 15 years, health care organizations and providers have begun to emphasize the development and use of "evidence based practices" (EBP). This means, the use of assessments, treatments, and organizational practices that are supported by evidence that shows they are effective. Of course, health care has a long history of being based on research and the scientific method.
But whereas, in the past, it might have been assumed that a physician is using the best practices for his/her patients, now health care organizations are developing programs to ensure that doctors and others throughout the hospital are using practices that are supported by the evidence. This means that all of us need to be knowledgeable about what the best practices are for our own portion of the mission of our agency. That is why, to prepare for positions in any aspect of health care, the study of research and statistics is important. We need to know how to? Locate information in peer reviewed journals about EBPs for our roles in the organization
- Think critically about how those EBPs can be applied in our settings
- Consider whether we might need additional information or data from our own setting to help us apply the EBPs discussed in the literature
- Collect and analyze the data from our own setting, so we can determine what works best there. The notion of EBP stems from the ideas of two physicians who started writing about Evidence Based Medicine in the 90s (Sackett & Rosenberg, 1995). They discuss five concepts that were emerging in physicians' thoughts about how best to use science in the practice of medicine:
1. The best research from both patient studies and laboratory studies should be used to guide decisions that health care providers make.
2. The evidence we look for should be guided by the actual problems that we're facing, instead of just using traditional ways of doing things.
3. We need to use statistical tools and studies to help improve our use of basic knowledge and personal experience.
4. The evidence is only as worthwhile as its ability to inform better treatment of our patients.
5. We need to continually analyze our effectiveness at applying EBP. Question: What do you think are some of the benefits of following these strategies? What are the challenges? Do you have any examples from your own life or work about how this might work?