EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is spreading in popularity in many healt h care disciplines. One of its main features is the reliance on the pa rtnership among hard scientific evidence, clinical expertise, and indi vidual patient needs and choices. Librarians play an important role in the spread of EBP because of the importance of identifying and retrie ving appropriate literature from various sources for use in making hea lth care decisions. This article gives an overview of how to search fo r therapy, diagnosis, etiology, and prognosis both for original studie s and secondary publications such as systematic reviews, meta-analyses , and clinical practice guidelines. Understanding how this research is done, how it is indexed, and how to retrieve the clinical evidence ar e an important set of skills that librarians can provide for clinician s interested in EBP.