Essential Evidence-Based Medicine
3rd Edition
Will be published approx. on 31. July 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
325 pages
978-1-009-20866-6 (ISBN)
Description
The ability to critically read health research literature and determine its validity is a cornerstone of evidence-based medicine (EBM) and health care (EBHC). Using this knowledge, along with their individual clinical experience and the preferences of their patients, to make informed decisions about treatment is an essential skill for a healthcare practitioner. This fully updated edition of a highly successful text educates the principles of research study methodology and design, along with core elements of biostatistics and epidemiology as applied to health care studies. A new chapter on EBM and the media has been added in response to increasing awareness of misinformation from traditional and social media. Accompanying online resources will enable readers to test their learning through a series of questions and exercises, accessible through a code printed inside the book. This is an ideal introductory text for medical and health sciences students and a wide range of other healthcare professionals.
More details
Edition
3rd Revised edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
Revised edition
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises
ISBN-13
978-1-009-20866-6 (9781009208666)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Dan Mayer is a Retired Professor of Emergency Medicine from Albany Medical College in Albany, New York, USA. He developed and taught the highly successful longitudinal four-year required medical student course called Evidence Based Health Care. He is one of the founders of the Evidence-Based Healthcare and Implementation Section of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine. Barnet Eskin has been a practicing Emergency Medicine physician for thirty-six years and teaches Emergency Medicine Residents, Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellows and medical students in the Emergency Department of Morristown Medical Center in Morristown, NJ, USA. He is Associate Professor at the Sidney Kimmel Medical School of Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA. David Nunan is Director of the Master's programme in Evidence-Based Health Care Teaching and Education and Senior Researcher and Educator in EBHC at the University of Oxford. He leads the teaching programme in EBHC including the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine's 'Teach the Teachers' course.
Content
Preface; Foreword by Sir Muir Gray; Acknowledgments; 1. A brief history of medicine and statistics; 2. What is evidence-based medicine?; 3. Causation; 4. The medical literature: an overview; 5. Scientific integrity and the responsible conduct of research John E. Kaplan; 6. Study design and strength of evidence; 7. Searching the medical literature Elizabeth Irish and Nia Roberts; 8. Instruments and measurements: precision and validity; 9. Sources of bias; 10. Review of basic statistics; 11. Hypothesis testing; 12. Type I errors and number needed to treat; 13. Negative studies and Type II errors; 14. Risk assessment; 15. Adjustment and multivariate analysis; 16. Randomized clinical trials; 17. Meta-analysis and systematic reviews; 18. Critical appraisal of qualitative research studies Steven R. Simon; 19. Applicability and strength of evidence; 20. Communicating evidence to patients Shobhina G. Chheda and Samantha Murray-Bainer; 21. EBM and the media; 22. An overview of decision making in medicine; 23. Sources of error in the clinical encounter; 24. The use of diagnostic tests; 25. Utility and characteristics of diagnostic tests: likelihood ratios, sensitivity, and specificity; 26. Bayes' theorem, predictive values, post-test probabilities, and interval likelihood ratios; 27. Comparing tests and using ROC curves; 28. Incremental gain and the threshold approach to diagnostic testing; 29. Sources of bias and critical appraisal of studies of diagnostic tests; 30. Screening tests; 31. Survival analysis and studies of prognosis; 32. Decision analysis and quantifying patient values; 33. Cost-effectiveness analysis; 34. Practice guidelines and clinical prediction rules; Appendix 1. Levels of evidence and grades of recommendations; Appendix 2. Overview of critical appraisal; Appendix 3. Commonly used statistical tests; Appendix 4. Formulas; Appendix 5. Proof of Bayes' theorem; Appendix 6. Using balance sheets to calculate thresholds; Appendix 7. Searching Tools; Glossary and acronyms; Bibliography; Index.