Scope and definition of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM), Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) and Evidence-based Health Care (EBHC); types, levels, forms and sources of evidence; factors contributing to the rise of EBHC; EBHC methodology; opportunities and barriers to EBHC. Health Services Research (HSR); HSR defined; types of questions addresses; areas of interest: access to care, quality of care and its cost; evaluate the effects and outcomes of healthcare; issues identified by IOM that health services researches address; key governmental and non-governmental players; define critical health services issues, health behaviours, clinical practice guidelines, meta-analysis. Studies: cohort studies, case-control studies, randomized controlled trials; suitability to a particular study, compare and contrast; merits and demerits. Formulating answerable questions; PICO method; type of question, type of evidence: case-control or cohort study, diagnostic validation study, inception cohort study, randomised controlled trial, economic evaluation or qualitative study; critical appraisal sheets. Finding the evidence: searching the literature, primary sources (PubMED), secondary sources (guidelines, CAT Crawler, evidence-based summaries: Bandolier, clinical evidence; structured abstracts: EBM Online, ACP Journal Club, systematic reviews: Cochrane library; searching several databases simultaneously www.tripdatabase.com), combining words (using logical operators) and thesaurus, filter for the right type of study; systematic reviews: quantitative meta-analysis, Cochrane library, precision and recall calculations; quality filtering and EBHC; ranking of evidence; critically appraisal of the evidence. Choose a sample: sample, variation, reducing variation, statistical methods, random sampling, choosing based on age, socio-economic status and/or health characteristics. Assigning sample into groups: intervention group, control group, exposed group. Assessment: recall bias; safeguards against bias: randomisation, concealed allocation, blinding, completeness of follow-up, intention to treat analysis; measurement errors; data errors; comparing outcomes. Analysis: strength of the association, relative risk, statistical significance, statistical testing or inference testing, p value, adjustment for cofounders. Interpretation: causal relationship, supporting evidence for causation. Extrapolation: generalisations. Define accuracy and precision measurements and how they impact on decision-making; define sensitivity and specificity, define a diagnostic test and its possible outcomes. Apply the concept of a gold standard, construct a 2x2 table, calculate and interpret sensitivity and specificity, interpret predictive values; calculate prevalence and interpret the results; define a prospective cohort study, a retrospective cohort study and a case-control study, for a cohort study calculate and interpret a relative risk, for a case-control study and calculate and interpret an odds ratio. Critical appraisal calculators. Evidence-based complementary and integrative medicine. Applying the evidence: patient values and preferences; values always influence decisions; evaluate performance.

Define evidence-based medicine, evidence-based practise and evidence-based health care. Identify health services research stakeholders and issues that health services research addresses. Categorise your research question using the PICO method. Justify the selection of a particular type of study, discussing its relevance, strengths and weaknesses. Select appropriate databases(s) for the topic of your search and successfully retrieve relevant citations. Describe the relationship between quality filtering and clinical guideline development and meta-analysis. Critically appraise evidence for validity and clinical importance. Apply appraised evidence in practice and evaluate performance.

Acknowledge the limitations of evidence-based health care.

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