Paul P. Glasziou

Decision making in health care involves consideration of a complex set of diagnostic, therapeutic and prognostic uncertainties. Medical therapies have side effects, surgical interventions may lead to complications, and diagnostic tests can produce misleading results. Furthermore, patient values and service costs must be considered. Decisions in clinical and health policy require careful weighing of risks and benefits and are commonly a trade-off of competing objectives: maximizing quality of life vs maximizing life expectancy vs minimizing the resources required. This text takes a proactive, systematic and rational approach to medical decision making. It covers decision trees, Bayesian revision, receiver operating characteristic curves, and cost-effectiveness analysis, as well as advanced topics such as Markov models, microsimulation, probabilistic sensitivity analysis and value of information analysis. It provides an essential resource for trainees and researchers involved in medical decision modelling, evidence-based medicine, clinical epidemiology, comparative effectiveness, public health, health economics, and health technology assessment.

How do we know whether a particular treatment really works? How reliable is the evidence? And how do we ensure that research into medical treatments best meets the needs of patients? These are just a few of the questions addressed in a lively and informative way in Testing Treatments. Brimming with vivid examples, Testing Treatments will inspire both patients and professionals. Building on the success of the first edition, Testing Treatments has now been extensively revised and updated. The Second Edition includes a thought-provoking chapter on screening, explaining why early diagnosis is not always better. Other new chapters explore how over-regulation of research can work against the best interests of patients, and how robust evidence from research can be drawn together to shape the practice of healthcare in ways that allow treatment decisions to be reached jointly by patients and clinicians. Testing Treatments urges everyone to get involved in improving current research and future treatment, and outlines practical steps that patients and doctors can take together.

The Evidence-based Practice Workbook is an ideal tool for use by GPs, medical specialists and other healthcare professionals to learn the concepts of evidence-based practice (EBP). Practical and interactive, this workbook provides simple methods to help health professionals find and use the best evidence to answer clinical questions, developing their skills in: asking clincal questionssearching for answersdiscriminating good from poor information and researchusing the answers to make clinical decisions This attractive, colour workbook provides a clear explanation of EBP skills and concepts. Written by internationally respected authors, this expanded and updated edition has been developed from evidence-based practice workshops run by the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Queensland and Oxford, and contains information and exercises to help health professionals learn how to use EBP in their clinical practice.

The Evidence-based Practice Workbook is an ideal tool for use by GPs, medical specialists and other healthcare professionals to learn the concepts of evidence-based practice (EBP). Practical and interactive, this workbook provides simple methods to help health professionals find and use the best evidence to answer clinical questions, developing their skills in: asking clinical questionssearching for answersdiscriminating good from poor information and researchusing the answers to make clinical decisions. This attractive, colour workbook provides a clear explanation of EBP skills and concepts. Written by internationally respected authors, this expanded and updated edition has been developed from evidence-based practice workshops run by the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Queensland and Oxford, and contains information and exercises to help health professionals learn how to use EBP in their clinical practice.

Clinicians are taught masses of facts, but not how to use them in the messy reality of patient care. This book provides a missing link between evidence and the clinical coalface. Though there are plenty of guides to evidence-based medicine, few explain how to build the information into patient oriented decision-making. Clinical Thinking allows you to think both logically and laterally about daily clinical issues and look at problems from different angles. Uses realistic scenarios, frameworks and modelsTakes you through the whole decision-making process, from observation and narrative to evaluating the best evidence for the individual situationIllustrations and flow charts help clarify this new approachThese methods have been tried and tested by the authors, internationally respected general practitioners and teachers in primary care – all leaders in the evidence-based medicine movement This book takes clinical medicine a big step forward in the direction of patient-focused practice!