EBM Guidebook

Table of Contents

Title Page

1. Introduction
2. STEP 1: Formulating the Question
   
   1. POEM
   2. PICO
3. STEP 2: Finding the Best Evidence
4. STEP 3: Appraising the Evidence
   
   1. CAMeL General Steps
   2. CAMeL Critical Appraisal Protocols
      
      1. Therapy
      2. Diagnostic Tests
      3. Review Articles
      4. Screening Tests
      5. Prognosis
      6. Causation
5. STEP 4: Preparing an EBM Presentation
   
   1. Protocol for the Presentation
   2. Sample Presentation
6. Overview of Statistics
   
   1. Statistics Without Statistics
   2. Ten Ways to Cheat
7. Glossary of Terms
   Terms marked with an asterisk (*)
   are defined in the Glossary.
References

  Back to Evidence-Based Instruction page

IV.  STEP 3: Appraising the Evidence  (continued)

2. Questions to Evaluate a Study Whose Primary Objective is to Evaluate a Diagnostic Test (continued)

		Target Disorder		Totals
		Present	Absent
Diagnostic Test Result	Positive	a	b	a + b
	Negative	c	d	c + d
	Totals	a + c	b + d	a + b + c + d

3. Questions to Evaluate a Review Article

1. Were the questions clearly stated?
2. Was the method of finding articles clearly stated?
3. Did the authors use sources in addition to the National Library of Medicine Database: search of references from articles, practice guidelines or recent metaanalyses, correspondence with experts to find unpublished sources, search of all relevant data bases? Did they try to find study data which were never reported?
4. Were the criteria for selecting articles or sources clear and explicit and were they followed?
5. Was the validity of the primary studies assessed? In other words, were the individual studies which went into the conclusions of the review judged for quality and meaning or just all lumped in together?
6. Can you tell from the summary who the patients were in the original work, what was specifically evaluated, and what were the exclusion and inclusion criteria?

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