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Community & Public Health Nursing : Evidence Based Public Health

EBPH Definition

Rychetnik et al. (2003) define evidence-based public health as "a public health endeavour in which there is an informed, explicit, and judicious use of evidence that has been derived  from any variety of science and social science research and evaluation methods" (p. 538).

This definition is derived from the definition of evidence-based medicine by Sackett et al. (1996): "the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients" (p. 71).

References:

Rychetnik, L., Hawe, P., Waters, E., Barrat, A., Frommer, M. (2004). A glossary of evidence based public health. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 58, 538-545. doi:10.1136/jech.2003.011585

Sackett, D. L., Rosenberg, W. M., Gray, J. A., Haynes, R. B., Richardson, W. S., (1996). Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn't. British Medical Journal, 312, 71-72.

EBP Terms

Evidence-Based Nursing: A way of providing nursing care that is guided by the integration of the best available scientific knowledge with nursing expertise. This approach requires nurses to critically assess relevant scientific data or research evidence, and to implement high-quality interventions for their nursing practice. (MESH Heading, U.S. National Library of Medicine)

Evidence-Based Practice: A way of providing health care that is guided by a thoughtful integration of the best available scientific knowledge with clinical expertise. This approach allows the practitioner to critically assess research data, clinical guidelines, and other information resources in order to correctly identify the clinical problem, apply the most high-quality intervention, and re-evaluate the outcome for future improvement. (MESH Heading, U.S. National Library of Medicine)

Evidence-Based Medicine: An approach of practicing medicine with the goal to improve and evaluate patient care. It requires the judicious integration of best research evidence with the patient's values to make decisions about medical care. This method is to help physicians make proper diagnosis, devise best testing plan, choose best treatment and methods of disease prevention, as well as develop guidelines for large groups of patients with the same disease. (from JAMA 296 (9), 2006 as cited in MESH Heading, U.S. National Library of Medicine)