On 16 January, Prof. Lawrence Green from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics – University of California, will be in Lisbon to present a conference entitled  “If we want more evidence-based practice, we need more practice-based evidence”. His article “Making research relevant: if it is an evidence-based practice, where’s the practice-based evidence?”, published in the journal Family Practice, promotes a needed change in research priorities and knowledge itself, by stating that the actual research is based on methods and patients that are far away from the reality of the daily practices.

I found this Medscape video that focus the same subject:

Making research relevant: if it is an evidence-based practice, where’s the practice-based evidence?

abstract

The usual search for explanations and solutions for the research-practice gap tends to analyze ways to communicate evidence-based practice guidelines to practitioners more efficiently and effectively from the end of a scientific pipeline. This examination of the pipeline looks upstream for ways in which the research itself is rendered increasingly irrelevant to the circumstances of practice by the process of vetting the research before it can qualify for inclusion in systematic reviews and the practice guidelines derived from them. It suggests a ‘fallacy of the pipeline’ implicit in one-way conceptualizations of translation, dissemination and delivery of research to practitioners. Secondly, it identifies a ‘fallacy of the empty vessel’ implicit in the assumptions underlying common characterizations of the practitioner as a recipient of evidence-based guidelines. Remedies are proposed that put emphasis on participatory approaches and more practice-based production of the research and more attention to external validity in the peer review, funding, publication and systematic reviews of research in producing evidence-based guidelines.

Keywords. External validity, evidence-based practice, dissemination, generalizability.

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Green LW. Making research relevant: if it is an evidence-based practice, where’s the practice-based evidence? Family Practice 2008; 25: i20–i24.