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Evidence‐based cardiac practice
Author(s) -
Silagy Chris
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
australian and new zealand journal of medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.596
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1445-5994
pISSN - 0004-8291
DOI - 10.1111/j.1445-5994.1997.tb02229.x
Subject(s) - medicine , clinical practice , evidence based medicine , audit , identification (biology) , systematic review , medline , health care , evidence based practice , magic bullet , cochrane library , risk analysis (engineering) , alternative medicine , nursing , bioinformatics , pathology , botany , management , political science , law , economics , biology , economic growth
Increasing attention is being placed on using an evidence‐based approach within health care decision making. In order to apply this approach to a particular clinical scenario, the relevant clinical evidence must be available, accessible, accepted, applied, and audited. Cardiovascular medicine is a discipline in which a large body of evidence is available. The development of the Cochrane Library, as a source of systematic reviews concerning the effects of health care, will make this evidence more accessible. However, caution is required in interpreting systematic reviews, particularly when meta‐analytic techniques are used, to ensure that potential sources of bias in the identification and synthesis of the primary studies are minimised. A further challenge is to develop strategies to ensure the evidence is accepted and applied in clinical practice. Although there are no magic bullets to change behaviour of positions, there are a number of strategies which have been shown to influence change positively in clinical practice.