Evidence based practice resources
Evidence based practice
Good health professionals inform their clinical practice by consulting the best evidence available to them - this is evidence based practice. Understanding how to form clinical questions, determine the level and type of evidence available to answer questions and find clinical evidence are all important evidence based practice skills. Find out more about the evidence based approach in the Evidence Based Practice subject guide.
- Evidence Based Practice (EBP)Evidence for clinical practice might include research journal articles, evidence summaries, evidence based guidelines, point-of-care tools and clinical trials.
Finding clinical evidence
The resources below may assist you in your search for clinical evidence.
Journal articles
Evidence based research is most commonly published in journal articles. Medline, Pubmed, Embase and CINAHL are good places to start looking for research articles.
Clinical evidence databases
- PEDro : Physiotherapy Evidence DatabaseA database of evidence relevant to physiotherapy. PEDro contains citations of thousands of randomised controlled trials, systematic reviews and evidence-based clinical practice guidelines relevant to physiotherapy.
- JBI EBP database (Ovid)Find summarised and appraised evidence to inform health practice, including evidence summaries, best practice information sheets, systematic reviews and more.
- ClinicalKey (Elsevier)Evidence based clinical summaries and guidelines, patient education resources, journal articles, ebooks, videos and drug information for all healthcare and medical disciplines.
- Cochrane LibraryProvides in-depth research summaries (systematic reviews), and research journal articles with a focus on evidence-based medicine and healthcare.
- PubMed Clinical QueriesA specialized search within PubMed that focusses on evidence based clinical studies, systematic reviews, and medical genetics. Note: Griffith University users may not have access to the full-text as user registration, a subscription fee, or some other type of fee may be required to access the full-text of articles in some journals.
- OTseekerOTseeker is a database that contains abstracts of systematic reviews and randomised controlled trials relevant to occupational therapy. Trials have been critically appraised and rated to assist you to evaluate their validity and interpretability. These ratings will help you to judge the quality and usefulness of trials for informing clinical interventions.
- CINAHL Complete (EBSCOhost)
A comprehensive database of journal articles and other publications for nursing and allied health. Coverage includes nursing specialties, speech pathology, nutrition, general health and medicine and more.
Clinical guidelines
Clinical guidelines provide evidence based information to support decision-making for patient care. Clinical guidelines can often be found in journal article or clinical evidence databases, as well as in collections from national or state based groups.
- MEDLINE (EBSCOhost)Find the details of journal articles and other publications across the biomedical and life sciences. MEDLINE is a subset of PubMed.
- CINAHL Complete (EBSCOhost)
A comprehensive database of journal articles and other publications for nursing and allied health. Coverage includes nursing specialties, speech pathology, nutrition, general health and medicine and more.
- ClinicalKey (Elsevier)Evidence based clinical summaries and guidelines, patient education resources, journal articles, ebooks, videos and drug information for all healthcare and medical disciplines.
- JBI EBP database (Ovid)Find summarised and appraised evidence to inform health practice, including evidence summaries, best practice information sheets, systematic reviews and more.
- Therapeutic GuidelinesFind clinical guidelines and therapeutic recommendations for a wide range of medical disorders.
Australian guidelines
- Guidelines International NetworkFind Australian guidelines via the Guidelines International Network (GIN).
- NHMRC Clinical Practice GuidelinesContains a range of information on clinical practice Guidelines for the community, and specialist information for researchers, clinicians and other health professionals.
- Queensland Health - Clinical guidelines and proceduresQueensland Health guidelines collection
- Medical Journal of Australia - Guidelines and statementsThe Medical Journal of Australia is a peer-reviewed medical journal published 22 times a year. It is the official journal of the Australian Medical Association.
International
- National Institute for health and care Excellence (NICE) Guidance - UKCollection of NICE guidance
- National Guideline Clearinghouse (US)Resource from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) collecting summaries of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines.
Appraisal of clinical guidelines
The benefits of practice guidelines are only as good as the quality of the guidelines themselves.
AGREE II (Appraisal of Guidelines for Research & Evaluation) is an internationally recognised, validated tool for the critical appraisal of clinical guidelines.
Point-of-care resources
- BMJ Best PracticeDecision-support tool with evidence-based summaries and resources on medical symptoms and conditions. Includes guidelines, patient information and case reports.
- ClinicalKey (Elsevier)Evidence based clinical summaries and guidelines, patient education resources, journal articles, ebooks, videos and drug information for all healthcare and medical disciplines.
- Therapeutic GuidelinesFind clinical guidelines and therapeutic recommendations for a wide range of medical disorders.
Clinical trial websites
Evidence from registered clinical trials (which may not have been published) can provide valuable information.
- Australian New Zealand Clinical Trial RegistryThe Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR) is a register of clinical trials being undertaken in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. The ANZCTR includes trials from the full spectrum of therapeutic areas of pharmaceuticals, surgical procedures, preventive measures, lifestyle, devices, treatment and rehabilitation strategies and complementary therapies.
- ClinicalTrials.govThis site provides access to information explaining and describing clinical trials. It contains research being conducted on a wide range of diseases and conditions in all US States and in over 220 countries.
- PLOS Clinical TrialsPLOS Collections aggregate and curate related content from PLOS journals and the PLOS Blogs Network to provide structured access to papers of interest in the PLOS corpus and demonstrate innovative approaches to the assessment, organization and reuse of research, data and commentary.
- Australian Clinical TrialsAustralianClinicalTrials.gov.au is a joint initiative between the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science to provide information and resources to consumers, health care providers, researchers and industry about clinical trials.
- EU Clinical Trials RegisterThe EU Clinical Trials Register contains information on interventional clinical trials on medicines conducted in the European Union (EU), or the European Economic Area (EEA) which started after 1 May 2004.
- International Clinical Trials Registry PlatformThe ICTRP Search Portal aims to provide a single point of access to information about ongoing and completed clinical trials. It provides a searchable database containing the trial registration data sets made available by data providers around the world meeting criteria for content and quality control.
- ISRCTN registryThe ISRCTN registry is a primary clinical trial registry recognised by WHO and ICMJE that accepts all clinical research studies (whether proposed, ongoing or completed), providing content validation and curation and the unique identification number necessary for publication. All study records in the database are freely accessible and searchable.
