Commentary and Issues : Who knows best? Evidence-based practice and the service user contribution

Abstract

This paper reviews the assumptions underlying traditional medical research and critiques the concept of ‘evidence-based practice’. In particular, it identifies and counters three basic tenets of this approach: the alleged need for objectivity in research, the notion of hierarchies of evidence and the primacy of systematic reviews. Instead, the paper argues for a new emphasis on ‘knowledge-based practice’, recognizing that the practice wisdom of health and social care practitioners and the lived experience of service users can be just as valid a way of knowing the world as formal research.

The Ethos of Physical Activity Delivery in Mental Health: A Narrative Study of Service User Experiences

“…This approach is in line with Glasby and Beresford's (2006) conceptualization of knowledge-based practice which values, incorporates, and responds to both the practice wisdom of health and social care practitioners and the lived experience of service users. Our primary interest is to reflect on the hallmarks or characteristics of physical activity provision which service users experience as positive, helpful and/or beneficial.…”

‘Making It Real’: Evaluating the Impact of Service User and Carer Involvement in Social Work Education

“…Other barriers include academic cultures not acknowledging the value of SUCI (Branfield, 2009;Fox, 2011) and downplaying the status of knowledge gained from experience (Glasby and Beresford, 2006;Beresford and Boxall, 2012). Thus it is argued that far from empowering service users and carers, involvement can lead to further inequality, oppression and exclusion (Cowden and Singh, 2007;Warren and Boxall, 2009).…”

Gaining by giving? Peer research into service user and carer perceptions of inclusivity in Higher Education

“…respondents as barriers that could be overcome in a spirit of partnership, suggesting that some of Glasby & Beresford's (2006) aspirations for a lessening in hierarchical practices within HE are actually happening. The responses regarding barriers were candid and might have been so as a result of SUAC peers having conducted the field research.…”

“…This consumerist agenda can be critiqued as an anti-professional neo-liberal stance which views health and social care services as businesses in which the customer is king (Harris, 2003). Glasby & Beresford (2006) promote SUAC involvement, specifically in the research arena, as a necessary antidote to the elitist hierarchy that has characterised western academic research. Such a view positions SUAC knowledge as a different kind of knowledge, rather than an inferior type of knowledge, to that held by senior academics and professionals.…”