Healthcare Leaders

Healthcare research or EBM is important to healthcare leaders for many reasons, one of which can help a physician determine the course of treatment. There are three parts total to the EBM including “research-based evidence, clinical expertise (i.e., the clinician’s accumulated experience, knowledge, and clinical skills), and the patient’s values and preferences” (Haughom). The first part of EBM is research-based evidence, which is the already established evidence on treatments to perform based on the research that already has been done. The second part is clinical expertise which is the clinicians understanding and experience that they have gained over time. The final part to EBM is the patient’s values and preferences which is a huge part of the process of treatment and crucial because ultimately, the physician has to do what the patient wants based on their values. EBM helps allow physicians to make decisions combining all three of the factors and allows physicians to stay up to date on current research and treatments, improves accountability, improves quality of care and finally improves outcomes (Haughom). These healthcare leaders use the EBM to help evaluate different avenues of treatment and then based on the evaluations they will choose the best route of treatment. A great example of the utilization of EBM is when a physician does not have sufficient enough time to read all different studies and conduct research to see if his or her patient would respond well to this type of approach (Masic). Instead, these clinicians will pull from real world experience that they have as well as experience of others to create a treatment plan that would best work for everyone. (Masic) This allows for the process of treatment to be much quicker instead of drawn out.