Health policy: getting it right

Evidence-based healthcare is organised in three sections: finding and appraising evidence; developing the capacity for evidence-based decision making; and getting research into practice. It is written for those who make decisions about groups of patients in order to “improve the competence of health service decision makers and to strengthen the motivation of any health service decision maker to use scientific methods when making decisions”. Thus, it represents one man’s vision for evidence-based healthcare and is a source of illumination and support for would-be evidence-based decision-makers. It is clearly not aimed at novice clinicians attempting to familiarise themselves with the technical tasks of critical appraisal or electronic information-searching techniques. This is the companion volume to such instructional texts. This edition shows signs of “second edition spread”, having grown from 270 to 444 pages over four years. New chapters cover evidence-based public health, consultation, and introduce post-modernism to evidence-based health care.