Evidence-Based Medicine and the Search for a Science of Clinical Care

Patient management is the central clinical task of medical care. Until the 1970s, there was no generally accepted method of ensuring a scientific, critical approach to clinical decision making. And while traditional clinical authority was under attack, there was increasing concern about the way in which doctors made decisions about patient care. In this book, Jeanne Daly traces the origins, essential features, and achievements of evidence-based medicine and clinical epidemiology over the past few decades. Drawing largely on interviews with key players, she offers unique insights into the ways that practitioners of evidence-based medicine set out to generate scientific knowledge about patient care and how, in the process, they reshaped the way medicine is practiced and administered.

ISBN 0520243161   Volumes 1 ISBN13 9780520243163 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 542 Publisher The University Press Group Ltd   Published in CA Imprint University of California Press   Series ISSN 12 Format Hardback   Series title California/ Milbank Books on Health & the Public Publication date 11 May 2005   Height (mm) 235 Library of Congress 2004019930   Width (mm) 159 DEWEY 616   Spine width (mm) 19 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level Professional / Scholarly Pages 290

		Foreword by Daniel M. Fox and Samuel L. Milbank
1		Introduction : evidence, science, and certainty		1
2		Clinical epidemiology : the intellectual heritage		20
3		The discipline of clinical epidemiology		49
4		The rise of evidence-based medicine		75
5		An appraisal, with critique		102
6		The British intellectual heritage		128
7		The Cochrane collaboration		154
8		The Cochrane collaboration in South Africa		182
9		Achievements and limitations		206
10		The continuing search for a science of clinical care		235

"This book is an engaging account of the evolution of evidence-based medicine, and an incisive analysis of this approach to improving healthcare. Daly's critique is a refreshing and scholarly contrast with the erection and demolition of straw men by many critics of EBM, as she poses important challenges to practitioners, policy makers, patients, researchers and others who wish to play their part in improving clinical care." - Sir Iain Chalmers, Editor at the James Lind Library"

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