Delfini Evidence-based Practice Series Guide Books
"Best help with evidence-based medicine available."
Martin Gabica MD, Chief Medical Officer, Healthwise
What is Unique About This Book + More Details About This Book
- Practicalinformation can be applied instantly
- Concise
Can be read in a few hours - Clear
Key concepts are explained in easy-to-understand language - Complete enough
We give you the basics you need to evaluate most clinical trials of therapies. We don't bog you down with details you do not need to know. With rare exception, or unless you are a researcher, you don't need to know such concepts as the different observational study types, you don't need to understnd power calculations, and you only need a few, easy-to-understand statistics—we give you simple explanations that you can even use in explaining results to patients. - Extreme value
Not only immediately invaluable, but at a value price—affordable and far lower than most other text books on this or any subject.
Basics for Evaluating Medical Research Studies: A Simplified Approach
And Why Your Patients Need You To Know This
We are proud to announce our first in a series of books designed to help with various aspects of "applied" evidence-based clinical improvement.
Our books are based on years of successful academic and hands-on experience in evidence-based clinical quality improvement and critically appraising and summarizing medical evidence.
Our approach is practical, simplified, doable, tool-based and has helped hundreds.
Also read about our workshops.
Basics for Evaluating Medical Research Studies: A Simplified Approach
And Why Your Patients Need You to Know This
Used in medical, pharmacy and nursing schools and in medical and pharmacy residencies.
"Highly recommended! Sheri and Mike have distilled their many years of hands-on experience evaluating medical research and teaching others to do so into a succinct, practical and easy-to-understand handbook that clearly and simply explains to readers how to assess the quality and usefulness of clinical trials and other medical articles. Key statistical concepts are presented clearly and explained in a math-free way that is not intimidating. They also equip readers with a wealth of practical tools that have been refined over time into 1-page guides and checklists which are used by many around the world. Read my full review here." John C. Pezzullo, PhD, Biostatistician and Author of Biostatistics for Dummies
"I am full of admiration for this terrific little book on evaluating medical research studies which is written clearly, simply and appropriately for a starter audience. Those with more experience often need reminding of the basics and can benefit from it too. I know of no other book that has succeeded so well in getting everything important covered so succinctly, which the authors have done brilliantly well!" Richard Lehman, MA, BM, BCh, MRCGP, Senior Research Fellow, Oxford, and Blogger, BMJ Journal Watch
"This book provides a great introduction and guide for anyone who wants to understand how to interpret clinical research but feels intimidated by science or statistics. Sheri and Mike transform their experience of teaching these concepts to thousands of people into a format like they are speaking to you directly. For the evidologist there is a nice compilation of the evidence for critical appraisal components." Brian S. Alper, MD, MSPH, FAAFP, Editor-in-Chief, DynaMed
"This noteworthy book educates on many issues we address daily at HealthNewsReview.org. Written for physicians and other healthcare professionals, the authors write in terms the public can understand. Journalists who feed off a steady of diet of journal articles should read it along with the collection of tools at delfini.org. The book is only 112 pages. It won't overwhelm you, but will educate you on many of the themes we touch on so often as we analyze media messages about medical research studies. Strite and Stuart also provide examples to help educate." Gary Schwitzer, Publisher
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Basics for Evaluating Medical Research Studies: A Simplified Approach
And Why Your Patients Need You to Know This
This book is about how to evaluate the reliability and clinical usefulness of clinical trials. Written for physicians and other health care professionals, this book is written in easy-to-understand terms that even the layperson can understand and put to use.
In a few hours after reading short book, you can learn basic critical appraisal skills to help you evaluate clinical trials and other medical research studies of therapeutic interventions. And here's why you need to—
The shocking truth is that most scientific research that informs most doctors' medical decisions is unreliable or is of uncertain reliability. And many doctors and other health care professionals do not realize this.
Every day patients are harmed by unfortunate health care choices—and some of them die because of it. Too often this happens because of problems with the information provided to the patient—or its lack—where different information could have resulted in a very different choice—and a very different outcome.
The good news is that you only need to know a few, easy-to-understand statistics, and you need a few basic concepts to help you understand bias and chance.
Based on our popular simplified and tool-based approach, this Short How-to Guide Book in our Evidence-based Practice Series will provide you with the basic skills for evaluating much of the medical literature.
You will learn that the primary key to understanding the reliability of studies is largely about study design, execution and study performance outcomes.
We teach you—
- Experiments versus Observations: The quick and easy way to distinguish between experiments and observations—and why you need to know the difference.
- Assessing Selection Bias: 5 Essential Questions
- Important considerations include who was studied, how were they selected for study, are there enough people, how were they assigned to their study groups, and are the groups balanced?
- Assessing Performance Bias: 2 Essential Questions
- What is being studied, and what is it being compared to? What else happened to study subjects in the course of the study?
- Assessing Measurement & Attrition Bias: 2 Essential Questions
- What information was collected, and how was it collected? What data are missing, and does missing data meaningfully distort the study results?
- Assessing Assessment Bias: 2 Essential Questions
- How is the difference in outcomes between the groups evaluated? What are those differences and how are they expressed?
- Understanding Chance
- Easy Ways to Evaluate Results
- Safety
- Evaluating Authors' Conclusions
This book will help your patients better avoid what has happened to millions of patients—insufficient or misleading information leading to unfortunate choices that resulted in bad outcomes.
Delfini Group
Authors Sheri Ann Strite &
Michael E. Stuart MD
Many other resources to help you with evidence-based clinical improvement are freely available from us at www.delfini.org.
Also read about our workshops.
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