Evidence Based Practice and Its Problems

Evidence-based practice models are the standard for physicians, nurses, rehab therapists and other clinicians, ensuring that they only use treatments that have clinical research to prove their validity. These models aim to get rid of trial and error methods of patient care or treatments developed from clinicians' anecdotal observations that may not be entirely accurate or beneficial. Although patients and practitioners alike often feel that clinically proven approaches lend credibility to the health care profession, others are concerned with the options it eliminates and ignores.

Creativity

• Practitioners who use only evidence-based treatments stick to what's tried and true. Patients have the comfort of knowing that whatever treatment they receive is reliable and safe. However, clinicians close themselves off to trying new techniques they develop themselves through experience and experimentation. Many in the medical community espouse the idea that through observing and trying new approaches, practitioners play an important role in how medical science progresses.

Cutting Edge Treatment

• Because of the need for clinical evidence, an evidence-based practitioner may pass on experimental treatments or those at the forefront of current health care thought. For example, a physical therapist with an evidence-based practice might choose not to try a new exercise or device that a leader in his field has tried and found successful in a number of cases. This is because the evidence is anecdotal. The physical therapist will instead wait until formal studies show the validity of the treatment -- which could mean his patients go without a potentially beneficial therapy technique for some time.

Delays

• Quality clinical research and studies take time. Depending on the type of medicine and the issues involved, clinical research can take months and even years which can significantly slow down the speed at which new and beneficial ideas become legitimate treatments. This becomes compounded by the amount of time it can take to bring a new treatment or drug to clinical trials. Clinical research requires funding and interested scientists or practitioners. Independent research can be even harder to come by as a university or government laboratory needs to become involved. In the end, evidence-based practices make patients wait longer to get potentially effective treatments.

Direction

• Some critics of evidence-based clinical practice feel that medicine doesn't study the right things. Typically, clinical research focuses on specific drugs, interventions and surgical procedures. That's because research examines the validity of specific pieces of empirical data. Proponents of holistic medicine often find that for all the clinically avid research in existence, much of it doesn't address the importance of looking at the body as a whole including the relationship between body and mind. As a result, some people feel evidence-based practitioners are missing beneficial approaches and treatments.