Completion requirements
View
6. Step 3: Your conclusion: Is the paper of sufficient quality?
6. Step 3: Your conclusion – Is the paper of sufficient quality?
The critical appraisal conducted in Step 2 should help you decide whether the conclusions drawn from the study are valid.
You may agree with the conclusions stated by the authors, or you may disagree with all or part of their conclusions, and may have drawn your own valid conclusions.
A poor overall evaluation does not inevitably mean that the information is completely wrong or useless, but it indicates that the risk of bias is quite high. Therefore, you should be cautious when considering implementing the findings from papers in clinical practice, especially those of questionable quality.
Quality evidence is only useful if it is relevant to your clinical question. If you are unsure whether the evidence you have found is relevant, read 'How relevant is the evidence?' in the next section Apply.
If you feel the paper is not of sufficient quality, or relevance to support your clinical decision-making, do not be afraid to discard it!
If you feel the paper does provide some valid and relevant evidence, you can move on to the next step and determine whether and how you can Apply this evidence to your decision-making process. This is a great outcome of using EBVM!