POPM 3240 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Evidence-Based Medicine, Observational Error, Confounding
23 Apr 2019
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Document Summary
Systematic process used to identify the strengths and weaknesses of a research article in order to assess the usefulness and validity of research findings . Application of rules of evidence to a study to assess the validity of the data, completeness of reporting, methods and procedures, conclusions, compliance with ethical standards, etc . The conscientious, explicit and judicious use of the currect best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients . Must include best research evidence available, clinical judgement, and patient. So, you need to know the literature, and assess the quality of that literature. Methodological and non-methodological factors: methodological (eg. study design, statistical analyses, addressing bias, non-methodological (eg. relevance, originality, conflict of interest) Lack of a gold standard for evaluating studies. Some journals provide structured guidance: eg. require use of specific checklists (eg. strobe, consort, these are reporting guidelines to help ensure authors include all details necessary for readers to assess study quality.
