Identifying research evidence relevant to clinical practice

Identifying the evidence that matters, keeping up to date and applying evidence in practice is a significant challenge for busy clinicians

When the BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine Journal was launched, about 10,500 randomised trials were indexed on PubMed. Identifying the trials that affect practice has become harder: 20 years later, over 30,000 trials are published annually. If we focused purely on systematic reviews, we would face similar problems: over 19,000 systematic reviews were indexed on PubMed in 2017.

As a result, the BMJ EBM Journal has set out to identify, and focus on, the research evidence that provides definitive conclusions and research that confirms, refutes or improves current practice.

The EBM Journal has focused on two questions:

  1. does this research apply to the patients we see in practice?
  2. and what difference could this evidence make to my patient?

In doing so, the BMJ EBM Journal can remove a substantial amount of research that does not matter.

Read Introducing the EBM Verdict: research evidence relevant to clinical practice, bestpractice.bmj, 2019.

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