What kind of evidence do patients and practitioners need: evidence profiles based on 5 key evidence-based principles to summarize data on benefits and harms.

摘要

Decisions depend on evidence.Patients' outcomes depend on the quality of the doctors' decisions. However, decision-making in contemporary medical practice appears to be Less than desirable. One of the major reasons that suboptimal decisions are being made in everyday practice and that doctors are not prescribing effective interventions is because evidence that is required for decision-making is not available at the time when it is needed most. The main culprit for this is that modern healthcare professionals are faced with information paradox: they are overwhelmed with information but cannot find it when and where they need it i.e. at the point of care. In addition, many types of biases have been described in decision-making. By and large these biases are related to the way information is synthesized, delivered, processed, recalled, and acted upon. Therefore, if clinicians are to make good decisions, the information content should be reliable of the highest possible quality and easily accessible when it is needed.