Evidence-Based Medicine and the Changing Nature of Health Care


Book Description

Drawing on the work of the Roundtable on Evidence-Based Medicine, the 2007 IOM Annual Meeting assessed some of the rapidly occurring changes in health care related to new diagnostic and treatment tools, emerging genetic insights, the developments in information technology, and healthcare costs, and discussed the need for a stronger focus on evidence to ensure that the promise of scientific discovery and technological innovation is efficiently captured to provide the right care for the right patient at the right time. As new discoveries continue to expand the universe of medical interventions, treatments, and methods of care, the need for a more systematic approach to evidence development and application becomes increasingly critical. Without better information about the effectiveness of different treatment options, the resulting uncertainty can lead to the delivery of services that may be unnecessary, unproven, or even harmful. Improving the evidence-base for medicine holds great potential to increase the quality and efficiency of medical care. The Annual Meeting, held on October 8, 2007, brought together many of the nation's leading authorities on various aspects of the issues - both challenges and opportunities - to present their perspectives and engage in discussion with the IOM membership.




Evidence-based Healthcare and Public Health


Book Description

As the demand for health services rises & the pressure on these services grows, decisions about the use of scarce resources are becoming even more difficult to make & more explicit. This text provides healthcare managers with the knowledge they need.




Evidence-based Healthcare


Book Description

The evidence-based medicine movement has been one of the most important influences on medicine in the latter half of the 1990s. This textbook on evidence-based decision-making--basing clinical decisions on the best available evidence from systematic research--is ideal for healthcare, medical, and nurse managers. It explains how evidence-based decision making can be applied to health policy and management decisions about groups of patients and populations, rather than decisions about the treatment of individuals. Its first edition was well reviewed and highly successful, and this new edition builds upon the success of the first.




Evidence-Based Public Health


Book Description

There are at least three ways in which a public health program or policy may not reach stated goals for success: 1) Choosing an intervention approach whose effectiveness is not established in the scientific literature; 2) Selecting a potentially effective program or policy yet achieving only weak, incomplete implementation or "reach," thereby failing to attain objectives; 3) Conducting an inadequate or incorrect evaluation that results in a lack of generalizable knowledge on the effectiveness of a program or policy; and 4) Paying inadequate attention to adapting an intervention to the population and context of interest To enhance evidence-based practice, this book addresses all four possibilities and attempts to provide practical guidance on how to choose, carry out, and evaluate evidence-based programs and policies in public health settings. It also begins to address a fifth, overarching need for a highly trained public health workforce. This book deals not only with finding and using scientific evidence, but also with implementation and evaluation of interventions that generate new evidence on effectiveness. Because all these topics are broad and require multi-disciplinary skills and perspectives, each chapter covers the basic issues and provides multiple examples to illustrate important concepts. In addition, each chapter provides links to the diverse literature and selected websites for readers wanting more detailed information. An indispensable volume for professionals, students, and researchers in the public health sciences and preventative medicine, this new and updated edition of Evidence-Based Public Health aims to bridge research and evidence with policies and the practice of public health.




Evidence-Based Policy


Book Description

Over the last twenty or so years, it has become standard to require policy makers to base their recommendations on evidence. That is now uncontroversial to the point of triviality--of course, policy should be based on the facts. But are the methods that policy makers rely on to gather and analyze evidence the right ones? In Evidence-Based Policy, Nancy Cartwright, an eminent scholar, and Jeremy Hardie, who has had a long and successful career in both business and the economy, explain that the dominant methods which are in use now--broadly speaking, methods that imitate standard practices in medicine like randomized control trials--do not work. They fail, Cartwright and Hardie contend, because they do not enhance our ability to predict if policies will be effective. The prevailing methods fall short not just because social science, which operates within the domain of real-world politics and deals with people, differs so much from the natural science milieu of the lab. Rather, there are principled reasons why the advice for crafting and implementing policy now on offer will lead to bad results. Current guides in use tend to rank scientific methods according to the degree of trustworthiness of the evidence they produce. That is valuable in certain respects, but such approaches offer little advice about how to think about putting such evidence to use. Evidence-Based Policy focuses on showing policymakers how to effectively use evidence, explaining what types of information are most necessary for making reliable policy, and offers lessons on how to organize that information.




Evidence-Informed Health Policy, Second Edition: Using EBP to Transform Policy in Nursing and Healthcare


Book Description

“Evidence-Informed Health Policy serves as a foundation for policymaking using an evidence-informed model with emphasis on the fact that the best policy is based on evidence. The second edition helps transform students into healthcare advocates who can work collaboratively throughout the policymaking process, preparing them to engage at any policy level in shaping the future of nursing.” –Keeley Harding, DNP, APRN, CNS, CPNP-AC/PC; and Beverly Hittle, PhD, RN Assistant Professors and Course Faculty Leaders for Combined DNP-PhD Health Policy University of Cincinnati “This book is an essential resource for nurses and healthcare professionals who are engaged or interested in influencing health policy and navigating complex health policy environments.” –Jacalyn Buck, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, FAONL Clinical Professor Director, DNP Executive Track The Ohio State University College of Nursing “This new edition is a valuable resource for those nurses wanting to learn more about evidence-informed health policy, development of such policies, as well as the importance of nurse participation in their development.” –Jane F. Mahowald, MA, BSN, RN, ANEF Immediate past Executive Director of the Ohio League for Nursing What happens in health policy at local, state, and federal levels directly affects patients, nurses, and nursing practice. Some healthcare professionals, though, are intimidated by the complex and often nonlinear policy process or simply don’t know how to take the first step toward implementing policy change. In the second edition of Evidence-Informed Health Policy, authors Jacqueline M. Loversidge and Joyce Zurmehly demystify health policymaking and equip nurses and other healthcare professionals with the knowledge, tools, and confidence to navigate the first of many steps into health policy. This book translates the EBP language of clinical decision-making into an evidence-informed health policy (EIHP) model—a foundation for integrating evidence into health policymaking and leveraging dialogue with stakeholders. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: Extending the Use of Evidence-Based Practice to Health Policymaking Chapter 2: The Use of Evidence: The Changing Landscape in Health Policymaking Chapter 3: Health Policy and Politics Chapter 4: Government Structures and Functions That Drive Process Chapter 5: Policymaking Processes and Models Chapter 6: An Overview of an Evidence-Informed Health Policy Model for Nursing Chapter 7: The Foundation: Steps 0 Through 3 of the EIHP Process Chapter 8: Policy Production: Steps 4 and 5 of the EIHP Process Chapter 9: Follow-Through: Steps 6 and 7 of the EIHP Process Chapter 10: Health Policy on a Global Scale Chapter 11: Evidence-Informed Health Policymaking: Challenges and Strategies Appendix A: Resources Appendix B: Global Examples of Evidence-Informed Policymaking: An Annotated Bibliography




Patient Safety and Quality


Book Description

"Nurses play a vital role in improving the safety and quality of patient car -- not only in the hospital or ambulatory treatment facility, but also of community-based care and the care performed by family members. Nurses need know what proven techniques and interventions they can use to enhance patient outcomes. To address this need, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), with additional funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has prepared this comprehensive, 1,400-page, handbook for nurses on patient safety and quality -- Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. (AHRQ Publication No. 08-0043)." - online AHRQ blurb, http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/nurseshdbk/




Evidence-based Health Policy


Book Description

Health policy is a highly contested arena where there have been increasing calls for policy to be more 'evidence based'. A central question remains 'is evidence-based health policy possible?' This book offers a critical perspective on the interplay between generation and policy formulation. The purpose of this book is to critique the notion that evidence-based medicine can make an unproblematic transformation into evidence approach to health policy that makes use of the best available research in an explicit, rigorous and accountable way. The book is illustrated by eleven case studies of health policy making that elucidate how evidence is used in particular policy making contexts. These case studies provide unique insights from the people who have been involved in the policy process. They reveal the complex nature of evidence-based research. The premise of the book is that although the idea of evidence-based health policy holds considerable promise, it will not be realised without substantial evaluation of the problems, conceptual and practical, that beset it.




Evidence-Based Health Informatics


Book Description

Health IT is a major field of investment in support of healthcare delivery, but patients and professionals tend to have systems imposed upon them by organizational policy or as a result of even higher policy decision. And, while many health IT systems are efficient and welcomed by their users, and are essential to modern healthcare, this is not the case for all. Unfortunately, some systems cause user frustration and result in inefficiency in use, and a few are known to have inconvenienced patients or even caused harm, including the occasional death. This book seeks to answer the need for better understanding of the importance of robust evidence to support health IT and to optimize investment in it; to give insight into health IT evidence and evaluation as its primary source; and to promote health informatics as an underpinning science demonstrating the same ethical rigour and proof of net benefit as is expected of other applied health technologies. The book is divided into three parts: the context and importance of evidence-based health informatics; methodological considerations of health IT evaluation as the source of evidence; and ensuring the relevance and application of evidence. A number of cross cutting themes emerge in each of these sections. This book seeks to inform the reader on the wide range of knowledge available, and the appropriateness of its use according to the circumstances. It is aimed at a wide readership and will be of interest to health policymakers, clinicians, health informaticians, the academic health informatics community, members of patient and policy organisations, and members of the vendor industry.




Evidence-Based Practice


Book Description

Evidence-Based Practice: An Implementation Guide for Healthcare Organizations was created to assist the increasing number of hospitals that are attempting to implement evidence-based practice in their facilities with little or no guidance. This manual serves as a guide for the design and implementation of evidence-based practice systems and provides practice advice, worksheets, and resources for providers. It also shows institutions how to achieve Magnet status without the major investment in consultants and external resources.