Evidence Based Practice

Welcome to the Library Guide about Evidence Based Practice (EBP). We have collected all kinds of handy information and links for you, so you can succesfully formulate a PICO question, write a CAT assignment or follow an EBP course.

Click on one of these links to quickly go to a specific section of this Guide.

• What does PICO mean and how can I make one? 
• Are there CAT checklists for every type of research? Where can I find those?
• What types of research give the strongest evidence?
• What databases are best to use?
• Can I get some help with my research/ PICO question? 

Evidence Based Practice (EBP) is "the use of best research evidence, along with clinical expertise, available resources, and the patient's preferences to determine the optimal management options in a specific situation" (Liamputtong, 2013, p. 453). 

EBP is about making clinical decisions based on the best available evidence from scientific research. In addition, the knowledge and experience of the care provider and the values and norms of the individual patient are also important.

Based on a work of the University Library Utrecht at libguides.library.uu.nl

A Critically Appraised Topic (CAT) is a concise summary of the existing evidence on a particular (medical) topic, and an analysis of how strong this evidence is. A well-written CAT forms a basis from which Evidence Based Practice is possible.

At the beginning of a CAT you formulate a PICO question. PICO stands for Patient, Intervention, Comparison and Outcome. Read more about drafting PICO questions here.

Based on your PICO question, you will look for the strongest evidence in the scientific literature. You do this by thinking carefully about relevant search terms and searching in the right place. Thanks to your own formulated inclusion and exclusion criteria, you are left with a small number of suitable scientific sources to copy your CAT.

Assessing the strength of a particular source is done on the basis of Critical Appraised Tools, which are checklists for different types of sources with which you can assess the quality. Here you will find more information about various Critical Appraised Tools.

View the different steps in the drop-down menu under Step-by-step plan to find out more. 

Here are some interesting links and other Library Guides for you to check out. The PubMed Library Guide is currently only available in Dutch