Ethical Use Of Evidence-Based Practice In Health Care

“What is evidence based practice?”

I- Introduction

The method of Evidence-based practice gained momentous in the early nineties. Its roots grew from the field of medical practice and over the years extended to a number of others fields within and outside medicine under the label of ‘Evidence-based practice’. In the last decades evidence-based practice (EBP) has been expanded in a number of health fields including public health, nursing, social work, mental health and also in educational settings and has come to shape policy in these areas.

Through the years the approach is growing and broadening, despite the challenges encounter by practitioners and other professionals involved in research in various and different fields, as for example

Perhaps the best definition of EBP was one given by David Sackett et al. (1996) “ EBP is the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of the individual patient. It means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research” (p.71). The method varies according to the particular area in which a professional works. For example, a medical practitioner might prove treatment effectiveness not only through proven trails, his knowledge, judgment and personal experience but also through the use of trustful external evidence-based resources, such as Cochrane Library, Best Evidence, Evidence –Based Medicine among others. This essay focuses on the concept of evidence-based practice and what it means to a psychodynamic approach.

II- Evidence based practice and Psychodynamic

This study tried to identify whether ‘talking therapies’ were effective in reducing relapse of moderate to severe depression in young people during a period of one year after treatment ends. Results in this study showed that young participants in all three modalities of the study presented reduced depressive symptoms. STPP was considered as effective as CBT and BPI in holding reduced depressive symptoms a year after the end of treatment with a small advantage of 85% of adolescents treated by STPP not meeting diagnostic measure for depression compared to 75% in CBT and 73% in BPI. Despite these percentages not being considered statistically significant it points out the effectiveness of STPP in decreasing depression in a long term. In relation to the cost of treatments, there were no differences between the three treatments costs at the end of the