Eastern Michigan University Library

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is the concept of basing clinical care decisions on the best available knowledge or evidence, rather than on tradition or past practice. It means finding the best available evidence to support a clinical decision for an individual patient.

What this means is that when searching for information in the electronic journal article databases, searches will be limited to those articles that show evidence through quantitative research such as clinical trials, laboratory experiments, systematic reviews, etc.

It is possible to limit searches in both CINAHL and PubMed to evidence-based materials.

In CINAHL, one method is to limit searches under the Publication Type menu to:

• Clinical trials
• Doctoral dissertations
• Meta analyses
• Research articles
• Some practice guidelines
• Randomized controlled trials (RCTs)
• Research
• Systematic reviews

CINAHL also provides a single check box under the limits area of the Advanced Search screen as a quick limit for evidence-based practice articles

In PubMed, searches can also be limited to articles that contain evidence for practice. Most of these limits are simple check boxes under the "Limits" link and "Type of Article" menu. Here is a list of the EBP publication types in PubMed:

• Clinical trials
• Meta analyses
• Randomized controlled trials
• Clinical trials, phases 1-4
• Comparative studies
• Controlled clinical trial
• Evaluation study
• Twin study
• Validation studies

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