THE MEDICAL LITERATURE AS A RESOURCE FOR HEALTH-CARE PRACTICE

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is an approach to health care that promo tes the collection, interpretation, and integration of valid, importan t and applicable patient-reported, clinician-observed, and research-de rived evidence. The best available evidence, moderated by patient circ umstances and preferences, is applied to improve the quality of clinic al judgments. The Health Information Research Unit of McMaster Univers ity Faculty of Health Sciences in conjunction with others at McMaster and elsewhere has developed, evaluated, and made more accessible infor mation tools to facilitate the practice of EBM. These include users' g uides to the medical literature, strategies for improving the yield of MEDLINE searches, standardized formats for abstracts of journal artic les and guidelines, new journals, systematic reviews and meta-analyses , and software tools that bring high quality information to the point of clinical decision making. This article discusses these and other EB M resources for health care professionals.