The oil crisis, risk and evidence‐based practice

Abstract

Evidence-based practice has risen to prominence over the last 20 years. Different professions have taken it up in different ways and for different purposes. It has been seen as holding both threats and advantages to professionalising endeavours and professional identity. It has engendered controversy but some criticisms of it have been unconvincing. It is possible to account for its rise as a response to tightening financial constraints on state spending in the west, as a sign of a culture increasingly concerned with risk, distrust of professionals and experts, as well as a way for professionals themselves to maintain control over their activity in the face of growing managerialism. This paper reviews the literature of some of the movement's proponents as well as criticism from various professional groups. It concludes that more useful than either arguing for or against it, is to understand the policy background and sociological reasons for its emergence and spread.

Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse in health sciences: truth, power and fascism

“…These outcomes are desirable because they are believed to be beneficial to patients 5 . Evidence‐based practice derives from the work of Archie Cochrane, who argued for randomised controlled trials (RCTs being the highest level of evidences) as a means of ensuring healthcare cost containment, among other reasons 6 . In 1993, the Cochrane Collaboration, serving as an international research review board, was founded to provide clinicians with a resource aimed at increasing clinician–patient interaction time by facilitating clinicians’ access to valid research 2 .…”

“…The Cochrane database was established to provide this resource, and it comprises a collection of articles that have been selected according to specific criteria 7 . For example, one of the requirements of the Cochrane database is that acceptable research must be based on the RCT design; all other research, which constitutes 98% of the literature, is deemed scientifically imperfect 6 …”

“Evidence-Based Dentistry in Oral Surgery: Could We Do Better?”~!2009-10-06~!2009-10-14~!2010-07-16~!

“…Nevertheless, some researchers still do not agree to consider this scientific movement as entirely positive. For instance, 96% of the articles do not satisfy the inclusion criteria of the evidence-based research [11]. What is the meaning of this datum?…”

The Use of Postcolonialism in the Nursing Domain

“…17(p95) The objectives of the critique of discourses from a postcolonial perspective are linked to the following important questions. 23 Although attempts have been made to distinguish nursing from medicine, 3 the colonizing process of the former by the latter has been going on for some time without any substantive and efficient means for disrupting the process. Which rules order these statements?…”

“…One of the major objectives of royal science is to "striate" (control/refuse access/survey/map) the space it occupies and over which it reigns. This assertion may sound controversial, even subversive, but many other nursing critics of the biomedical model and its correlates 3,21,23,43 are also making this same point quite clearly; although some of us may wish to discredit/disqualify this assertion, labeling it as polemical as opposed to nuanced (read scientific) and as if it is unthinkable to be political, controversial, and scientific at the same time. Like gated communities, it filters what is coming in, and attempts to block or exclude those who do not represent the predesignated norm.…”