Obtaining useful information from expert based sources

Abstract

SummaryClinicians rely heavily on expert based systemsconsultation with colleagues, journal reviews and textbooks, and continuing education activities-to obtain new information. The usefulness of sources such as these depends on the relevance and validity of the information and the work it takes to obtain it. Useful information can be distinguished from the useless by asking three questions: Does the information focus on an outcome that my patients care about? Is the issue common to my practice, and is the intervention feasible? If the information is true, will it require me to change my practice? If the answer to all three questions is yes, then the information is a common POEM (patient oriented evidence that matters), capable of improving the lives of your patients and must be evaluated for validity. Conclusions based on results of well designed clinical trials are more likely to be valid than those drawn from observations based on experience in clinical practice. Both members of the team, clinicians and experts, must take responsibility for their respective roles.

General dental practitioners' knowledge of and attitudes towards evidence based practice

“…However, experts and colleagues are a quick, cheap and easy to use, source of information and also provide guidance, support, affirmation, and other psychological benefits that computerised sources can not provide. 22 The problem with textbooks as a source of evidence is that the information may be more than a decade out of date at the time of publishing. 23 Ideally, clinicians should be turning to electronic databases of secondary research eg Cochrane Collaboration and DARE (Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness).…”

Teaching Information Mastery: Creating Informed Consumers of Medical Information

“…12 No. 6 Academic family medicine has successfully contributed to the creation of a new information base; now is the time to embrace the concept of responsibly managing and disseminating new information. Offering a structured curriculum to all residents is crucial for training dynamic, confident, and independent information masters of the future.…”

Anaesthesia and evidence‐based medicine

“…Some is good; some is bad. Useful though experts are [103], we must not overlook the way they can fool -which is not too strong a word -an audience, either with the written or the spoken word [104]. (As a side-issue, one of the farreaching but so far unrealised consequences of the full acceptance of evidence-based medicine will be the demise of many of the lectures so favoured for continuing medical education, especially as these lectures have little effect on doctors' performance [105].)…”