Background

Evidence-Based Healthcare (EBHC) means making care decisions by combining up-to-date research with professional expertise and the needs of the individual patient. The aim is identify and apply the most effective interventions to maximise patients’ quality and length of life.

In practice (and across all health professions), EBHC:

• integrates clinicians’ hard-won judgement with the best external evidence from systematic research;
• is not “cookbook” medicine—guidelines inform, but clinicians decide what fits a particular patient;
• is not limited to randomized trials—diagnosis, prognosis, and some therapies rely on the most appropriate study designs;
• asks clinicians to search efficiently, appraise validity and applicability, and then apply findings with patients’ preferences and circumstances.

“Evidence-based medicine is the conscientious explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients”  (Sackett et al., 1996).

“Around half of clinical trials have never been reported. This is the story of the campaign to find them—and to fix medicine”  by Ben Goldacre (AllTrials).

Trials with negative results are twice as likely to remain unreported as those with positive results. This means that people who make decisions about medicines don’t have full information about the benefits and risks of treatments we use every day.

The hidden side of clinical trials | Sile Lane | TEDxMadrid

References

Nursing Education Network. (2025). Evidence-Based Healthcare (Part 1)

The Story of AllTrials (2015)

Sackett, D. L., Rosenberg, W. M., Gray, J. M., Haynes, R. B., & Richardson, W. S. (1996). Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn’t. BMJ; 13 January 1996