Mental health is one of the biggest causes of disability in the developed world, but lacks parity of esteem or of funding with physical health. Alice Buchan looks at the use of Cochrane evidence in a Department of Health medical report on the subject.
Sense about science are encouraging people to #AskForEvidence for fad diets. #diet #spoofdiets
Alice went to the Cochrane UK and Ireland Annual Symposium in Manchester in April – here are her reflections on its theme: Cochrane Evidence: Useful, Usable, and Used.
Sense about Science have a long-standing campaign encouraging people to #AskForEvidence and in their new Healthy Evidence forum, in partnership with NHS Choices, they ask patients and the general public to get involved!
Systematic reviews take a long time to produce, and are often not up to date. In PLOS Medicine last month, a ‘living systematic review’ was proposed, to reduce the gap between evidence and practice.
In a BMJ editorial last month, Des Spence suggested that EBM may be broken. Alice takes a closer look.
The Lancet has recently published a series of papers looking at problems with waste and inefficiency in research, with recommendations for how these could be overcome.
The universities of Duke and North Carolina have collaborated to produce a very thorough tutorial perfect for anyone new to evidence-based practice.
The final two plenary sessions of October 2013’s Cochrane Colloqium looked at knowledge and health globally, and then to the future.
Evidence-based medicine is not just about applying a systematic review letter for letter – but the ‘art’ of evidence-based medicine is in applying the science.
The second set of plenary talks included topics relevant to students, such as evidence-based medical education.
Videos of the plenary talks from the recent Cochrane colloquium are available online. Alice has had a look at some of the key points raised in the first session.
If you are new to EBM and methods such as critical appraisal, it can be daunting, but the CEBM tools are a useful introduction for beginners.
Alice takes a look at the evidence behind flight socks and other aspects of travel health.
PDQ-Evidence is a database specifically for finding evidence related to public health and health policy.
Systematic reviews aren’t cheap or quick – Alice looks at some suggestions from the blogs of Jon Brassey from TRIP and Mona Nasser from Cochrane.
Whether you couldn’t get enough of the rolling coverage of the royal birth, or couldn’t wait for it to be over, I have here for you a roundup of some of the recent systematic reviews and evidence related to pregnancy and childbirth (royal or otherwise).
Alice has revisited the cord clamping review, she blogged about a couple of months ago…
Reporting and discussing clinical trials clearly and accurately can be challenging, both for journalists, and also for students. Ruth Francis has compiled 11 top tips to make it easier.
The Trip database provides a new way of searching for evidence, including useful features like sorting by evidence quality.
Can probiotics prevent diarrhoea? A new Cochrane review says they can. This blog also walks through a few of the features of Cochrane reviews.
There’s a lot of evidence out there of varying quality. This slideshow looks at the uses of grading medical evidence, and how it can be done.
Applying the evidence in clinical practice may not always be easy. This slideshow looks at the roles of patient choice and other factors in making good evidence-based clinical decisions.
The BMJ Open Data Campaign seeks to make the data from unpublished trials available, so that decisions can be based on all the evidence.
This slideshow shows how the data generated in trials and analysed in systematic reviews can be applied in clinical practice.
This slideshow from the journal EBM may help introduce you to the role of Cochrane reviews in EBM.
A meta-epidemiological study published in the BMJ last month has found that smaller trials consistently report larger effect sizes.
A short article on the uses of Facebook friend finder…
The BMJ has on its website a series of articles on how to read papers, including clear explanations of the statistics commonly used and common pitfalls found in studies.
The 2007 NICE guidelines recommend that the umbilical cord be cut very soon after birth. However, in the face of evidence in favour of delayed cord clamping, these guidelines may soon be changing.
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Another 20 minute tutorial from Tim.
The nuts and bolts 20 minute tutorial from Tim.
This new webpage from Cochrane UK is aimed at students of all ages. What is evidence-based practice? What is ‘best available research evidence’? Which resources will help you understand evidence and evidence-based practice, and search for evidence?