From advertising to agriculture to cooking Evidence Based Practice EBP is

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From advertising to agriculture to cooking, Evidence Based Practice (EBP ) is abundant in our lives. It is the theory that decisions based on ideology are far weaker when compared to using relevant data and scientific methods. The practice is said to be derived from the formal introduction of evidence based medicine by the epidemiologist, Archibald Cochrane, in 1972. But the first documented work on EBP in the field was applied by Florence Nightingale, a nurse during the 1850’s. In the case of medicine, the practitioner diagnoses the patient on the basis of the best current research available, the physician’s expertise and the needs and requirements of the patient. Nightingale conducted extensive research on hospitals and their designs in France, Belgium and Crimea evaluating their environment and how to improve patient outcomes.“When the 2 books are viewed together with the steps of inquiry, the research question, the record & blueprint reviews, the observations, the clinician & patient interviews, the analysis, the statistics, the morbidity & mortality outcomes, and finally the dissemination, it is one enormous EBP project.”Her work helped pioneer a design for a prefabricated hospital that could be shipped to war zones and set up on site. The mortality rate dropped from 10% to 1% immediately after its implementation. But this was just one nurse and years of research. The one way to reduce bias and simplify this process is to use Randomised Control Trials. By setting up a controlled environment and a target group, only half the target group is assigned the test conditions at random while the other half is assigned a placebo. For example, if you wanted to find out if mice who eat sugar have less hair fall, you need target conditions. First a target group, it would be biased research if you only evaluate the first 10 mice you see. Next your conditions – how long you will be observing them for, nutrition, temperature of the rooms they stay in, lifestyle conditions. Then you divide the target group and give one half a placebo and the other sugar.