Description: Evidence-Based Healthcare in Context critically examines questions about what constitutes 'evidence' and 'effectiveness' from perspectives outside medicine, including those of patients, complementary medicine and midwifery. It focuses on the application of contemporary theoretical debates around the nature of medical and health knowledge, providing readers with a series of critical analyses of the production, application and translation of 'evidence' in a range of healthcare contexts.
Review Quotes: 'The idea of supporting clinical practices with evidence is all too often uncritically accepted as a reality, equally appropriate and achievable in all contexts without consequence. This excellent collection reminds us that evidence is socially and culturally produced and relative and that the very idea of Evidence-Based Healthcare can marginalize certain practices, diseases, research disciplines and methods. This is a must-read for students, researchers and health professionals.' Gavin Andrews, McMaster University, Canada 'The long-standing tradition in sociology of critically examining the training of health professionals and the process of knowledge creation in the health field is given a new angle - how to utilise the different forms of available knowledge to most effectively care for patients. Developing critical social science perspectives, this book provides an innovative set of reflections on the various strategies health professionals utilize to retain their clinical integrity in the face of evidence-based reductions.' Nelson Filice de Barros, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil 'This book, edited by two Australian scholars, [...] provides many fresh views that complement the general picture of EBM and related areas. It demonstrates very well the nature of EBM as a social movement and the 'bumpy road' of the implementation of EBM and other models... The empirical part of the volume provides some really interesting and also surprising results. One example is from Stefan Timmermans and Alison Angell who show that the introduction of EBM in post-graduate medical education may generate new forms of uncertainty, which is, of course, contrary to the original idea of EBM... the book is essential reading for anybody interested in an 'outsider's' critical look at evidence-based healthcare.' Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy