Dental Hygiene - Introduction to Evidence-Based Practice

Welcome

What is EBP?

ASK
Clinical Question

ACQUIRE
Literature Search

APPRAISE
Evaluate Evidence

Literature Reviews in Dental Hygiene

Test
Your Knowledge

Glossary (CEBM)

References

This tutorial is intended for any health care practitioner or student who needs a basic introduction to the principles of Evidence-Based Practice.

Upon completion of this self-paced tutorial, you will be able to:

• define Evidence-Based Practice (EBP)
• identify the parts of a well-built clinical question
• identify EBP searching strategies that could improve PubMed retrieval
• identify key issues that help determine the validity of the results of a study

Click on this link for a pdf file of the main tutorial for printing.

This tutorial includes four major units. A self-test and alternative evaluation modules are available from the original tutorial. We recommend that you go through them in sequence. They will give you an overview of the Evidence-Based Practice process as well as give you an opportunity to practice with new cases. The  four units are:

• What is EBP? provides definitions and explains the steps in the EBP process.

• Clinical Question introduces you to a patient, illustrates the anatomy of a good clinical question, and defines the types of questions and studies.

• Literature Search constructs a well-built literature search and identifies potentially relevant articles.

• Evaluating Evidence identifies criteria for determining the validity of a Systemic Review.  Additional evaluation examples are provided for these types of studies: Therapy (3 pages), Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Etiology/Harm.

In addition, these resources may be helpful. Please note that some information services or articles referenced may not be readily available, since our library may not subscribe to the same information services. If you would like to search for and/or request any reference, please email Jimmi.Rushing@LoneStar.edu for information and help in obtaining sources.

• Testing your Knowledge gives you an opportunity to practice the EBP process with several new cases. This links to the original tutorial located at the University of North Carolina.
  
• Glossary links to definition of EBP terms from the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine in Toronto
  

• References points you to additional sites for continued study of the EBP process and defines some of the terms used in EBP.

• Within this tutorial, you have several opportunities to follow links to other Web sites and the original tutorial. The external sites open in a new window. Close the second window to return to this tutorial.

We hope this tutorial will be easy to use as well as give you a foundation for the practice of Evidence-Based Practice (EBP). Allow approximately 1 hour to complete the tutorial and 1 practice case.

The original tutorial was developed by Connie Schardt (connie.schardt@duke.edu), Duke University Medical Center Library and Jill Mayer (Jill_Mayer@unc.edu), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Health Sciences Library. Robert Ladd, HSL at UNC-Chapel Hill, designed the graphics and the user interface. 

Thank you to Sheri Keitz, MD, Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, University of Miami Miller School of Practice, and Christopher Klipstein, MD, Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, UNC-Chapel Hill, who served as content evaluators for the original project.

 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

Revised July 2010 / Adapted February 2011