Evidence based practices

Evidence based practices Lots of products and services are sold, and people are persuaded that their purchases or their actions will lead to certain kinds of results (like health or profits). But is it true? Lets look at a stock broker, a teacher, and a medical doctor. (These are 3 professions that have movements towards using evidence based practices.)

A stock broker may be good at emotionally moving or convincing investors. A stock broker may also have a documented record of producing good returns on investments. Neither of these forms of evidence guarantee that using this particular stock broker will produce a good return on investments. Evidence based practices in stock brokering would use principles of what leads to a good investment. And it would use sound documentation of long-term results applying those principles. In other words, the principles would be backed up by great evidence of success. These principles might include fundamental study of the financial statements of companies under consideration. Evidence-based practice is difficult for people to think about and apply. It is difficult to know what evidence and what principles to use to make decisions. But the alternative, intuition, does not provably lead to good results. Evidence-based practice cannot mean simply using an instruction manual. If all investors used the same instruction manual then all prices would converge on an equilibrium, and there would be no bargains to be found. But if the principles are true then they may be a starting point for good investment decisions. Evidence-based practice means using intuition only when the evidence runs out.

A teacher, similarly, uses a combination of evidence-based practice and intuition in creating, implementing, and testing a lesson design. In the movements towards evidence-based practice in lesson planning, much weight is given to principles and lesson designs that have been tested and proven to produce results in learning, behavior, or some kind of success like grades, inventions, or income. Some people object to it because it seems to remove art and intuition from the profession of teaching. The problem in evidence-based practice is how to use evidence in a smart way.

When you go to a medical doctor, you expect diagnoses and treatments that cure your disease. You expect to be as healthy as possible. How do doctors achieve such results. A lot of study, good grades, completion of medical school and residency, and then professional practice. The science that produced the medical interventions has been based upon scientific evidence. It has been proven effective. But doctors do not have a ready tap into all the evidence in order to do the best thing possible in every circumstance. They use their education, observation, intuition, professional practices, and knowledge that they self-train in, which comes from their practice. They do not always do the "best" thing, because there is no one definitive guide to what the best thing is. Evidence-based practice cannot mean simply following a guide, if doing so is not proven to produce better results. The movement for evidence-based medicine can be seen in the practice of the Mayo Clinic (a group of about 3000 doctors in the US). The idea is not to get rid of all intuition or use a step-by-step guide, but rather to constantly improve our knowledge about what works by keeping better and better records. Between the years 2010 and 2020, the US government plans to support a massive project to collect and share statistics on the effectiveness rates of medical treatments nationwide. Such a database, if properly designed and implemented, is purported by proponents of evidence-based medicine to be able to lead to better and more consistent patient outcomes.

Resources

 * Evidence based practices