Institute:Office of National Coordinator (ONC) Workforce Training Curriculum
Component:The Culture of Health Care
Unit:Evidence-Based Practice
Lecture:Definition and application of EBM
Phrasing the clinical question
Slide content:Four Categories of Foreground Questions Intervention (or therapy)Benefit of treatment or prevention DiagnosisTest diagnosing disease HarmEtiology or cause of disease PrognosisOutcome of disease course 17
Slide notes:17 Most clinical questions fall into one of four major categories of foreground questions: intervention, diagnoses, harm, and prognosis. The first category is called an intervention , although many textbooks call it therapy . This category looks at the benefits of an intervention, such as treatment or prevention of disease. Diagnosis is when we look at some way of diagnosing disease, typically with a test. The tests we commonly think of are blood tests, but any type of maneuver on a physical examination is also a diagnostic test, as is an x-ray. Often we want to know what caused a disease, which is sometimes called the etiology of the disease. In the evidence-based-medicine category, this is usually called harm . What causes harm to a patient? Sometimes harm is caused to a patient in the form of an intervention, and we may do studies to look at that. And finally, the last question category is prognosis. What is the outcome of the disease course?