The Pharmacist's Guide to Evidence-Based Medicine for Clinical Decision Making

Book excerpt: Take the Practical Approach to Applying EBM Principles Pharmacists who make clinical decisions based on experience alone overestimate the efficacy and underestimate the safety risks of drugs. This leads to variations in services and treatment that result in inappropriate care, lack of care, and increased healthcare costs. Evidence-based medicine (EBM) employs the scientific method as the key source of knowledge for making clinical decisions. This easy-to-use new guide provides a practical approach for confidently applying EBM principles in daily practice. It's a straightforward process that allows pharmacists to incorporate their own clinical judgment while they make firm decisions and recommendations based on results of rigorously conducted clinical trials. Based on a five-step process perfected over 10 years at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, School of Pharmacy, this exciting new method makes it easy to apply the EBM approach in clinical settings. The new process streamlines the highly technical and complex original EBM method, greatly reducing its complexity while maintaining rigor. Categorizing quality of the evidence in a simple and logical manner, it provides critical, time-sensitive support for clinical decision-making.