Research, evidence and quality improvement

Here we focus on three key elements within evidence-based practice and how they inter-relate.

These three elements are significant for evidence-based practice: how clinicians can translate knowledge into practice and improve outcomes for patients.

Research provides an understanding of a care issue and can create knowledge of the efficacy of particular approaches – do they work, how well do they work? It can also provide information about how to implement care approaches.

Evidence, provided by the research, is used by different people and groups in different ways. It can be used by individuals in decision making about their own clinical practice – direct treatment and care of individual patients.

It can be used by services and organizations, such as aged care homes, hospitals, clinics, community centers to guide decisions at a service or organisational level.

And it can be used at a system level to inform policy about health care. We have a forthcoming federal budget where decisions will be made about resourcing programs; we would certainly hope that these decisions would be informed by research and be evidence-based.

Published literature is the main source of this evidence.