Evidence-based medicine on the wards: report from an evidence-based minion.

I often hear people say, "Real doctors don't have time for evidence-based medicine." In fact, practising evidence-based medicine while you work doesn't take much time at all—just Motivation. I did it as a house officer (intern), and you don't get much busier than that. Once you get into " right frame of mind, it is hard not to work in an evidence-based way, and lt >s lots of fun. How can you get started practising evidence-based medicine? Evidence-based medicine uses information from high-quality clinical studies to answer questions about patients in your care. For newcomers, all this evidence mumbo-jumbo can seem intimidating and can cause you to lose sight of the goal—treating patients more effectively. Fortunately, tliere are plenty of ways to learn all the essential information relatively painlessly. First, excellent books and articles that can help are available (1-24) as well as some evidence-based textbooks (25-27). Second, increasing numbers of courses are being offered by institutions worldwide that teach the process of asking answerable questions about patients, finding and appraising relevant articles quickly, and synthesising data into 1-page summaries called critically