Understanding how to evaluate the quality of the evidence base is crucial to choosing the most appropriate and up to date approach to clinical care in your specialty. It means knowing how and where to look for the evidence and then once you have the evidence, how to decide whether it is 'robust' or of sufficient quality that you can be confident that the findings are accurate. Only then can you be sure that the recommendations are safe to apply to your area.
Summarise what the user of CIPI should learn in this section
By watching the videos and reading the contents of the page you will understand:
- The nature and types of evidence
- The Hierarchy of evidence
- Where to look for evidence e.g. literature searching
- Understanding and identifying sources of bias
- How to choose and use a quality appraisal tool
How to complete this stage at BCHC
In order to learn about the state of existing knowledge about a specific intervention you could:
- Contact Smallwood Library here to see if anything has already been done on this topic (e.g., evidence searches, research, service evaluation or audit).
- If further research support is needed, contact R&I via email bchc.ri_info@nhs.net
