Evidence based practice is answering clinical questions using a combination of information from exisiting research, your clinical expertise, your patient's values, and the local resources.
Evidence based practice can be broken down into the following steps.
1. You ask a question about patient care, prognosis, harm, or diagnosis.
2. You clarify your question using PICO.
P=patient/problem I=intervention C=comparison O=outcomes
3. You search for an existing answer in research studies or summaries
4. You evaluate the answer that you find - does it fit with your patient's values and with the resources at hand?
5. You carry out the answer