Evidence-Based Medicine; Evidence-Based Health Care: How to Make Health Policy and Management Decisions

Evidence-Based Medicine

Lesley Grayson

British Library, £33, pp140

ISBN 0 712308369

Evidence-Based Health Care: How to Make Health Policy and Management Decisions

J A Muir Gray

Churchill Livingstone, £16.95, pp270

ISBN 0 443057214

Rating: ,

The designation “evidence based” is becoming de rigeur in the NHS. Clearly, evidence based medicine now has the status of orthodoxy, and we also hear of evidence based health care. More ambitiously, and perhaps with some naivety, there is also talk of evidence based management and evidence based policy.

The broad agenda espoused in the government's white paper The New NHS stresses quality and excellence as well as accountability for activity and money. Clinical governance, for example, is not just about professional performance (technical quality) but also about the accountability within (and of) the whole organisation for improved quality.

Clearly, one perspective of evidence based medicine is as a means of basing decisions on research evidence. Grayson's Evidence-Based Medicine is …