title: Inpatient general medicine is evidence based. A-Team, Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine.
abstract: For many years clinicians have had to cope with the accusation that only 10-20% of the treatments they provide have any scientific foundation. Their interventions, in other words, are seldom "evidence based". Is the profession guilty as charged? In April, 1995, a general medical team at a university-affiliated district hospital in Oxford, UK, studied the treatments given to all 109 patients managed during that month on whom a diagnosis had been reached. Medical sources (including databases) were then searched for randomised controlled trial (RCT) evidence that the treatments were effective. The 109 primary treatments were then classified: 82% were evidence based (ie, there was RCT support [53%] or unanimity on the team about the existence of convincing non-experimental evidence [29%]). This study, which needs to be repeated in other clinical settings and for other disciplines, suggests that earlier pessimism over the extent to which evidence-based medicine is already practised is misplaced.
authors.affiliation: Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, Oxford-Radcliffe NHS Trust, Headington, UK.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ellis
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Mulligan
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rowe
authors.forename: D L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Sackett
mesh_terms: D015510:Clinical Medicine; D003933:Diagnosis; D004358:Drug Therapy / Q000145:classification; D006767:Hospitals, District; D006801:Humans; D007297:Inpatients; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; D013812:Therapeutics / Q000145:classification