An Exploratory Study of Institutional Effects on the Practice of Evidence-Based Medicine in Acute Care Hospitals (Articles for Volume 5, Number 1) (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION Emergence of evidence-based medicine (EBM) indicates a paradigm shift from "intuition, unsystematic clinical experience and pathophysiological rationale" to an emphasis on "evidence from clinical research" (Evidence-based medicine working group, 1992). Following Shortell (2004), we define EBM as the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of diagnostic and treatment practices based on the best available biomedical and clinical research--when making decisions about the care of individual patients.