Changing practice in maternity care

BMJ 1998;317:1027-1028 ( 17 October )

Editorials

Changing practice in maternity care

It's hard to know what works

Papers p 1041

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The tenet that clinical practice should be guided by rigorous evidence has become so ingrained that clinicians who are slowon the uptake are seen as not aware of the evidence, bogged downby tradition, or $---$ worse $---$ having selfish motives for ignoring evidence.Rarely is the evidence itself questioned. Yet, if evidence werea straightforward concept, there would be no reason for the twodisciplines that appear to be governed by it, law and medicine,to be at loggerheads sooften.

The evidence available does not necessarily reveal what you are interested in for a particular situation. Thus many reviewsin the Cochrane Library, the gold standard of systematic reviews,devote no attention to adverse effects in assessing the effectivenessof health care interventions (Bastian H, Middleton P. CochraneColloquium, Amsterdam, 1997). Yet any intervention (be it advice,screening for disease, drugs, or surgery) that is likely to bebeneficial . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike

Complore

Connotea

Del.icio.us Add to Digg

Digg

Technorati What's this?

Relevant Articles

Randomised trials useful to find best methods of enhancing clinical practice: Jeremy C Wyatt, Sarah Paterson-Brown, Nicholas M Fisk, Richard Johanson, Douglas G Altman, and Michael Bradburn
BMJ 1999 318: 1353. [Extract] [Full Text]

Randomised trial of educational visits to enhance use of systematic reviews in 25 obstetric units: Jeremy C Wyatt, Sarah Paterson-Brown, Richard Johanson, Douglas G Altman, Michael J Bradburn, and Nicholas M Fisk
BMJ 1998 317: 1041-1046. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

Wyatt, J. C, Paterson-Brown, S., Fisk, N. M, Johanson, R., Altman, D. G, Bradburn, M. (1999). Randomised trials useful to find best methods of enhancing clinical practice. BMJ 318: 1353-1353 [Full text]
Pannikar, J., Farkas, A., Edmondson, R., Banfield, P. (1999). Value of educational visits in obstetrics. BMJ 318: 1143c-1143 [Full text]