Evaluating relevance

Format: 2-2 Comparison groups should be similar

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Language/s: 3-6 Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages?

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Resource Link: View the Text
Short Description:

How to evaluate relevance of research in Michigan State University’s Evidence-Based Medicine Course.

Key Concepts addressed:

• Chinese
• dansk
• Euskara
• Greek
• Hrvatski
• 1-10 Hope may lead to unrealistic expectations
• 1-8 More is not necessarily better
• 2-13 Relative measures of effects can be misleading
• 1-5 Newer is not necessarily better
• 1-3 Association is not the same as causation

Details

We feel that evaluating the relevance of a study is the first step in critically reading a paper. This directly relates to whether you can (or should) apply the results of the paper to the care of your patients. One of the first questions you should ask is whether the treatment is feasible. If you can’t do it or refer a patient for it, the treatment is irrelevant to your practice, and you can ignore the paper.

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