title: Understanding data; an introduction to critical appraisal.
abstract: Some basic information on how to help clinicians in understanding the results of papers are presented. Evidence based medicine is discussed and accepted concept of hierarchy of evidence presented in figure. Randomized control trial (RTC) is stressed as gold standard for evaluating the effectiveness of interventions. The examples of exercises (descriptive and inferential statistics) for understanding results are given. It is concluded that once one has a grasp of the basic steps outlined in presented text, the way to developing knowledge around evidence based practice is achieved.
authors.affiliation: Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland. ggethin@rcsi.ie
authors.forename: Georgina
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gethin
mesh_terms: D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D006801:Humans; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D009626:Terminology as Topic