Evidence Base within Clinical Practice In Modern Medicine (A Clinicians Perspective)

Abstract

The aim of this work is to critically assess to what extent and in what ways evidence based
practice may, or indeed may not, assist clinical practitioners to avoid confusing personal
opinion with evidence. “We become confident in our educated guesswork to the point where it
is easy to confuse personal opinion with evidence or personal ignorance with genuine scientific
uncertainty” (Naylor 1995). The author of this work is a clinician currently practising in the
area of acute and emergency and trauma healthcare, and therefore clinical treatments will be
considered in the context of evidence based practice. This work has been formulated around
an online postgraduate Master’s module investigating the meaning of evidence based practice
in the modern healthcare setting. Some of the content of this work will draw upon the learning
objectives of the evidence based module by using examples of online forum discussions, which
took place during the module between various clinical practitioners. It is a further expectation
of this work to examine to what extent and in what ways evidence based practice assists
clinicians in making research based clinical decisions, whilst considering how evidence is or
indeed is not amalgamated into clinical practice. Evidence and the concepts used to cement
evidence into practice will be explored both by considering the online forum discussions that
took place during the module, and again by looking at current research and literature to draw
comparisons and extract ideas.