What does Evidence-based actually mean? or Where have all the sceptics gone?
25 Feb, 16 | by BMJ
By Caroline Blaine
Commonly held opinions of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) include:
“Surely all medicine practised today is evidence-based.”
OR
“EBM just means blindly following guideline recommendations and trial results. It allows no place for professionalism, it is too rigid, and it does not “fit” the patient in front of me.”
Neither of these assumptions is true. The first one denies—against all evidence—that a problem exists, and the second is far from what the founders of EBM described.
Looking back to the publications on EBM from the early 1990’s onwards gives a perspective of the serious issues they were tackling, and the desire to make this fun, as well as easy to understand and adopt. Re-reading the original papers, it is disappointing to reflect on how little the paradigm has shifted. more…