The College Lecture Series FRACP

It’s that time of year again…

Prof Anthony F T Brown knuckles down and gets to grips with the evidence surrounding assessment and management in acute medicine for the annual FRACP lecture series.

Prof Brown aims to contextualize the most pertinent evidence based information pertaining to acute medical emergencies in summative statements.

Lets get started with the principal sources (reading list) for some of the best evidence based material…

Textbooks

• Evidence-based Medicine: How to Practice and Teach EBM.
  • Straus SE, Richardson WS et al eds. 3rdedition 2005, Churchill Livingstone.
  • The original and best EBM handbook with a support website
• Evidence-based on Call: Acute Medicine.
  • Ball C, Phillips R eds. Churchill Livingstone 2001.
  • Free website with well referenced topics (but not updated since June 2002). Useful for finessing clinical wisdom.
  • Uses likelihood ratios (LR+, LR-) to sequentially alter pre- and post-test probabilities via odds ratios. Interesting to see probabilistic (Bayesian) reasoning in action. For more explanation see Doust J. Using probabilistic reasoning. BMJ 2009;339:b3823 [Reference]

Journals

• Evidence-based Medicine for Primary Care and Internal Medicine. BMJ Publishing Group.
  • Bi-monthly. A digest of the latest research, with a brand new editor and board since June 2010. RSS updates available
• ACP Journal Club and ACP Journal Club PLUS (with online access to articles since 2003).
  • American College of Physicians ACP Journal Club
• Useful EBM papers
  • Baker A, Young K, Potter J et al. A review of grading systems for evidence-based guidelines produced by medical specialties. Clinical Med 2010;10:358-63 [Reference]
  • Grade Working Group. Grading quality of evidence and strength of recommendations. BMJ 2004; 328:1-8. Deeks J, Altman D. [Reference]

DataBases

• Centre for Evidence-based Medicine, University of Toronto.
  • ‘Homesite’ of EBM, with a wealth of evidence resources. [Website]
• Cochrane Library – Includes four main databases
• Clinical Evidence. BMJ Evidence Centre, BMJ Publishing Group.
  • BMJ Clinical Evidence
• UpToDate.
  • Evidence-based, peer-reviewed topic-based information resource with 8300 topics in 16 specialties.
• Trip Database.
  • Designed to allow rapid identification of the highest quality clinical evidence.
  • Free registration. User-friendly, fast and comprehensive - TRIP Database Website
• BestBETS
  • Brief, evidence-based answers to real-life clinical questions. Sorted by title or topic, plus other useful EBM resources - BestBets Website
• GoPubMed
  • Very useful site for review of PubMed journals – the most simple overlay of what is generally a difficult site to navigate - GoPubMed Website
• Google or Google Scholar
  • Free-text searches rather than Boolean. Improving all the time! Note though that articles are not arranged chronologically (unlike PubMed). Google Scholar Website