What Does Evidence Mean? Can the Law and Medicine Be Reconciled?

Autor: John M. Eisenberg
Rok vydání: 2001
Předmět:
Zdroj: Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law. 26:369-382
ISSN: 1527-1927
0361-6878
Popis: Popular attention has focused of late on the role of evidence in health care. Physicians have been encouraged to practice “evidence-based medicine,” so that their clinical decisions would be based upon a foundation of solid science, especially using research that has applied rigorous epidemiologic methods and has been published in peer-reviewed journals. Evidence-based medicine involves increased reliance on formal, systematic analysis and synthesis of the research literature to determine clinical effectiveness. It challenges consensus-based judgments and applies critical assessment of the available research to decide if there is methodologically sound evidence that the outcomes of a clinical option are favorable, and it identifies types of patients for whom the service is most effective. The response of some clinicians has been gratitude for the recognition, implicit in evidence-based medicine, that the everyday practice of clinical care can be an intellectually rigorous undertaking. Others have responded less gently, asking, in essence, “So what have I been practicing, magic?” Indeed, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that most clinicians’ practices do not reflect the principles of evidence-based medicine but rather are based upon tradition, their most recent experience, what they learned years ago in medical school, or what they have heard from their
Databáze: OpenAIRE