EMS and Evidence-Based Medicine Solutions
Challenging ALS and BLS standards of emergency medicine to improve patient outcomes and satisfaction
By Guillermo Fuentes
The term “evidence-based practice” has been used in EMS for more than a decade. The reality is, as a profession, we fail to understand what implementing an evidence-based practice actually means.
One of the most influential thinkers on the subject, the late physician David Sackett, defined evidence-based medicine as “the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. The practice of evidence-based medicine means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research” [1]. Using this definition, let’s take a look at the current state of the EMS profession and see how we measure up.