Health Subject Guide — Evidence Based Practice

Evidence Based Practice (EBP) is a process that involves finding the most current evidence based literature (usually a Randomized Controlled Trial), using your clinical expertise, and combining it with the needs of your patient/client to make treatment or diagnostic decisions, or to change policies.  EBP is the integration of:

• Best clinical research evidence with;
• Clinical expertise and;
• Patient values

(Sackett, DL et al.  Evidence-Based Medicine:  How to practice and teach EBM, 2nd edition.  Churchill Livingstone, Edinburgh, 2000).

The key steps in the EBP Process:

      Step 1:  Assess the patient/problem

      Step 2:  Frame your clincal question

      Step 3:  Find the evidence

      Step 4:  Assess the evidence

      Step 5:  Make the clinical change

      Step 6:  Evaluate 

When searching for the "evidence" remember to use the following databases available to UConn students and faculty: CINAHL, PubMed, Cochrane, DynaMed Plus, PsycINFO, Scopus, and TRIP.  TRIP is a free database that searches a number of sites for evidene based healthcare information.

Nursing students should also see Evidence Based Practice articles published in American Journal of Nursing listed in the EBP Articles box.