The EBM is intended to serve all participants in the medical process – physicians, researchers, healthcare administrators, and patients. It has become prevalent around the world, influencing medical research policy. It has been involved in allocating grants, approval of clinical trial protocols, editorial procedures for journals, and medical education. Evidence-based medicine also plays a significant role in health care, namely in the preparation of clinical guidelines and the formation of national drug formularies. In industrialized countries, the concept of EBM has spread among researchers in the field of clinical medicine and among practicing physicians. According to a survey of British general practitioners, as early as 1996, up to 80% of their clinical decisions were guided by EBM principles (Faan, 2019). Despite the growing popularity of this approach, there are many problems associated with its widespread implementation in daily practice. I see my role in developing and implementing evidence-based medicine in actively testing its methodology and identifying and eliminating its imperfections.
The primary condition for successfully implementing this type of therapy is constant work with existing scientific literature. Naturally, the constantly growing flow of printed and electronic publications does not allow practitioners to follow the flow of scientific reports even in their narrow fields. More than 2 million medical articles are published in more than 20,000 medical journals (Faan, 2019). The consumer of medical information is faced with the question of reliable, evidence-based information sources. I will emphasize the search for and regular study of reliable scientific sources in my work. I will also disseminate to my colleagues the recommendations of journals and collections that can be considered a valid basis for implementing evidence-based medicine.
As a necessary aspect of this approach, scientific activity should also be pursued in nursing practice. The latter should be based on the search for problems and difficulties in working with patients and the collection of the necessary qualitative and quantitative data for research. One of the quality indicators used to implement evidence-based medicine is patient satisfaction. Their opinion should be sought in nursing practice, and conclusions should be drawn. In the United States, the assessment of the quality of medical care is entirely focused on the patients’ views (Faan, 2019). This can lead to a distorted evaluation, as the patient is always subjective and evaluates primarily the nursing staff’s attitude rather than objective quality criteria, such as long-term outcomes. In addition, when the surgeon is operating, a patient does not know anything about the surgical procedure performed. Patient satisfaction can be only one additional criterion for quality assessment; nevertheless, in my practice, I will give preference to objective data in the first place.
Another significant challenge in implementing evidence-based medicine is developing critical scientific processing skills. Even after graduation, you need to improve your skills in finding and selecting reliable information. It is vital that the patients also be aware of the necessary knowledge about the chosen methods and the scientific basis of their treatment. Therefore, I consider it important to prevent a low level of their awareness in my practice.
The modern requirements for obtaining and analyzing biomedical data are essential for physician-researchers, readers of medical publications, and their authors because the EBM teaches how to get reliable and practically applicable research results. Health care management, it provides answers to the questions of which methodological recommendations and standards of care to implement and which drugs to purchase, i.e., how to organize effective health care.
Reference
Faan, M. (2019). Evidence-based leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship in nursing and healthcare: A practical guide to success (1st ed.). Springer Publishing Company.