• Buchbinder R
• Santesso N
• Maxwell L
• Tugwell PS
• Johnston R

• Cochrane Collaboration
• Evidence-Based Medicine
• Open Access Document
• Review Literature as Topic

Excerpt: Do you use evidence to inform your clinical decisions? Faced with the plethora of information and the number of trials and articles published every day, finding, reading,analysing and using research to inform decision making is a challenge. In 1995, it was estimated that a clinician would need to read 19 articles per day to keep abreast of the research.1 Today that tally has likely increased – the amount of research information is overwhelming. If research could be summarised, it may be easier to use evidence in decision making. But where can clinicians find reliable evidence that has already been summarised?

Textbooks, while a synthesised body of information, may already be out of date by the time they are published. Colleagues, a phone call or email away, may provide valuable clinical expertise but the information may be biased. The Internet may provide quick access to health information, but much of it is unfiltered and misleading.

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