**6. Skills required for EBM practice**

The five-step process of EBM requires a wide variety of knowledge and skills. To perform the first three steps, clinicians need to be able to question current clinical practice and answer clinical questions (Step 1), have knowledge of medical databases and skills in literature search (Step 2), ability to understand scientific methods and

*Perspective Chapter: Evidence-Based Medicine – A New Approach for Medical… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107298*


*Source: Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries: Evidence-Based Medicine Critical Appraisal Worksheet for a Therapy study: h ttp://www.dartmouth.edu/biomed/services.htmld/EBP\_docs/clin\_question\_worksheet.pdf*

#### **Table 2.**

*Critical appraisal worksheet to assess the validity and applicability of therapy studies.*

statistics (biostatistics and epidemiology). In applying the evidence (Step 4), physicians rely on their medical expertise. Therefore, they need the ability to use both clinical skills and previous experience to identify a patient's personal health status and diagnosis, their patient values and assessments, and the specific risks and benefits of


*Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries: Evidence-Based Medicine Critical Appraisal Worksheet for Diagnostic test study: http://www.dartmouth.edu/biomed/services.htmld/EBP\_docs/CriticalAppraisalWorksheetDiagnosis.pdf*

#### **Table 3.**

*Critical appraisal worksheet for a diagnosis study.*


#### **Table 4.**

*Critical appraisal worksheet for a prognosis study.*


Exposure (yes) A B Exposure (no) C D Cohort study: Relative risk = A/(A + B)/C/(C + D) For case–control studies: Odds ratio = A\*D/B\*C

*Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries: Evidence-Based Medicine Critical Appraisal Worksheet for an Etiology /Harm Study: http://www.dartmouth.edu/biomed/services.htmld/EBP\_docs/CriticalAppraisalWorksheetHarm-Etiology.pdf*

#### **Table 5.**

*Critical appraisal worksheet for a harm/etiology study.*


*Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries: Evidence-Based Medicine Critical Appraisal Worksheet for Applying the Evidence. h ttp://www.dartmouth.edu/biomed/services.htmld/EBP\_docs/ApplyingWorksheet.pdf*

#### **Table 6.**

*Checklists to apply the evidence in clinical practice.*


#### **Table 7.**

*Self-evaluation checklists to assess your performance.*

potential interventions [12]. Finally, to evaluate performance (Step 5), clinicians must be able to self-evaluate and reflect on their own performance in the EBM stages and on the application and integration of evidence into clinical practice [10].
