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Evidence-based information

Evidence-based practice

Evidence based practice is the provision of health care guided by the integration of the best available scientific or research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values.

This approach allows health care practitioners to critically assess evidence such as research studies, clinical guidelines, and other information resources in order to correctly identify the clinical problem and apply the most high-quality intervention.

Finding evidence

Collated (tertiary) information

Tertiary sources are sources that find, and collate secondary and primary resources. Examples of teritary sources relevant to your studies includes textbooks - which you can find in the library catalogue, or your online sources such as AHM - see drug information.

Filtered (secondary) information

The best sources for filtered information are specialised Library databases that provide access to evidence based systematic reviews, summaries, recommendations and clinical guidelines, including:

You can often find clinical guidelines and recommendations freely available on the web from government websites and professional associations. A key Australian example is:

Unfiltered (primary) information sources

Good sources of unfiltered information are journal articles from peer-reviewed journals. This is where researchers publish the results of their research studies. Other sources include preprints, conference proceedings and theses.

You can find journal articles using Library Search or use subject specialised journal article databases, such as nursing databases and psychology databases.

Key databases for finding health related journal articles include:

  • Last Updated: Dec 13, 2022 3:17 PM
  • URL: https://libguides.library.qut.edu.au/c.php?g=953506
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Subjects: Health
Tags: drug information, evidence based information, evidence based practice, grey literature, prescribing