Evidence-based medicine (EBM) has been defined as "the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. The practice of evidence based medicine means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research."(4) More recently, EBM has been described as the "integration of best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values."(5) This module provides skills and resources needed to retrieve clinical information grounded in research for evidence-based practice.

Upon completion of this module, you will be able to:

• explain the principles of PICO

• implement PICO principles to create a successful literature search

• identify the most important point-of-care tools

• differentiate between the Cochrane databases

• select and consult the appropriate Cochrane databases for research purposes