Learning to use evidence to support decision making

Evidence-based practice aims to improve outcomes for healthcare clients. This goal appears uncontentious and would generally be accepted by a range of stakeholders in health: patients/clients, healthcare professionals,managers, funding bodies and policy-makers. Chapters in Section 1 of this book have presented various interpretations of clinical reasoning. Building on the idea of clinical reasoning as a client-centred approach to making decisions for and with the client to optimize their health, we focus in this chapter on understanding evidence and learning to use it wisely to make relevant,sound and defensible clinical decisions.