Evidence-based medicine is the practice of making medical decisions through the judicious identification, evaluation, and application of the most relevant information.

Evidence-based medicine does not discount the importance of clinical experience, pathophysiology or patient preferences; rather, they are incorporated within the framework of EBM whereby clinicians frame the clinical question, retrieve the relevant information, critically appraise it, and ultimately integrate and apply it to the care of the patient.

There are three main components of EBM:

• Medical Decision-Making Techniques: helps frame the clinical scenario and apply the relevant information to the care of the patient.
• Accessing Medical Information: optimally retrieves the most rigorously designed studies or evidence-based integrative literature.
• Assessing the Validity of Medical Information: critically appraises the validity of findings in individual studies or integrative literature.