What are the other uses of EBM?

Although the prime focus of this book is how to master and use EBM in making decisions around the problems of individual patients, several other uses have been recognized:

• It reinforces the need for, and mastery of, the clinical and communication skills that are required to gather and critically appraise patients' stories, symptoms, and signs and to identify and incorporate their values and expectations into therapeutic alliances.
• It fosters generic skills for use in finding, appraising and implementing evidence from the basic sciences and from other applied sciences.
• It provides an effective, efficient framework for post-graduate education and self-directed, life-long learning; when coupled with "virtual libraries" and distance learning programs it supplies a model of worldwide applicability.
• Although not its primary aim, by identifying the questions for which no satisfactory evidence exists it generates a supremely pragmatic agenda for applied health research (that is formally recognized by groups such as the UK NHS R&D Programme).
• As shown in the CD and on the website that accompany this book, it provides a common language for use by the multidisciplinary teams whose effective collaboration is essential if patients are to benefit from new knowledge.