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:Another Viewpoint Concerning Evidence (Haynes, 1999) Can it work? Efficacy studies take place under ideal circumstances This unit looks mainly at such studies Does it work? Effectiveness studies ascertain whether something works in the real world Sometimes called outcomes research (Clancy & Eisenberg, 1998) Is it worth it? Cost-benefit or cost-effectiveness studies determine whether benefits worthwhile in relation to cost or other resources 7
Slide notes:7 Another viewpoint concerning evidence comes from Brian Haynes, whose name you will see throughout this unit. The kinds of questions that we think about when we apply evidence or when we assess a treatment or a diagnostic test are Can it work? Does it work? and Is it worth it? The first question we ask about a study is, Can it work? Studies that investigate whether something works are typically called efficacy [ ef - i - kuh -see] studies. These studies take place under ideal conditions, such as in a randomized controlled trial. The participants are followed closely, and a great deal of data about them is collected. Efficacy studies help us determine whether tests or treatments work. Evidence-based medicine focuses primarily on those kinds of studies. The next question is, Does it work? Often called effectiveness studies, these studies investigate whether something works in the real world when put in the hands of a much larger segment of the clinical provider population. The final question in this framework is, Is it worth it? To answer this question, cost-benefit or cost-effectiveness studies are done to see whether the benefits are worthwhile in relation to the cost of a test or a treatment.