Michele Mason-Coles offers classes on evidence-based practice and evidence-based medicine upon request for groups as well as individuals. She has broad experience and subject expertise in this area and can design a class to meet your needs or the needs of your learners.
Users' Guides to the Medical Literature by 
Evidence-Based Medicine by 
Clinical Epidemiology by 
Studying a Study and Testing a Test by “The conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. The practice of evidence-based medicine requires the integration of individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research and our patient's unique values and circumstances.”
-Centre for Evidence Based Medicine (CEBM), Toronto, CA
Glossaries of EBM terminology from reputable online resources:
| Assess | Assess the patient or problem to determine the pertinent issues. |
| Ask | Ask a clear, answerable question to be pursued. |
| Acquire | Acquire the evidence from an appropriate source. |
| Appraise | Appraise the evidence to further examine its worth and reliability. |
| Apply | Apply the evidence to the particular patient and their unique values and circumstances. |
General questions or background questions ask for basic knowledge about an illness, disease, condition, test, process or thing. These types of questions typically ask who, what, where, when, how & why about things like a disorder, test, or treatment, etc.
For example
These types of questions are best answered by medical textbooks, point-of-care tools (e.g. DynaMed Plus, Essential Evidence Plus, Lexicomp, OvidMD), and narrative review articles.
A well-built clinical foreground question should have at least 4 components. The PICO model is a helpful tool that assists you in organizing and focusing your foreground question into a searchable query.
P = Patient, Problem, Population (How would you describe a group of patients similar to you? What are the most important characteristics of the patient?)
I = Intervention, Prognostic Factor, Test, Exposure (What main intervention are you considering? What do you want to do with this patient? What is the main alternative being considered?)
C = Comparison (What is the main alternative to compare with the intervention? Are you trying to decide between two drugs, a drug and no medication, placebo, or standard of care, or two diagnostic tests?)
O= Outcome (What are you trying to accomplish, measure, improve or affect? Outcomes may be disease-oriented or patient-oriented.)
Use this chart to help determine the best study to search for during your literature search.
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Another element of the well-built clinical question to consider is the type of study (methodology). This information can be helpful in focusing the question and determining the most appropriate type of evidence.
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