The factors to consider when critically appraising articles on therapy are summarized in Table 1 [ 13, 14, 15].
Thus, to practice EBM clinicians need to critically appraise articles in the medical literature and then apply the evidence to specific patients.
Among those with disagreement, the lay reviewer was significantly more likely to appraise articles as worrisome compared to the medical reviewer (77.4% vs. 3.2%, X2 = 9.11, P = 0.003).
The main strength of our study is the systematic methods used to identify and appraise articles presenting and evaluating case definitions of chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis.
Moreover, one visiting teacher believed that students lacked sufficient skills in research method to fully understand how to critically appraise articles.
The main strength of our study is the systematic methods used to identify and appraise articles presenting case definitions of CFS/ME and studies potentially useful to evaluate the case definitions.
The methodologic criteria outlined in Table 6 are the same as those used for critically appraising articles for inclusion in 4 evidence-based medicine journals that our research group produced in 2000 (i.e., ACP Journal Club, Evidence-Based Medicine, EvideNursinged Nursing, and Evidence-Based Mental Health).
Because the residents had only just graduated from 12 different US medical schools, this finding suggests that many medical school graduates are able to critically appraise articles on diagnostic testing but few are able to take the next step- that of revising the probability of disease given a test result.
Two reviewers (a lay person and a physician) screened full text articles for eligibility, appraised the articles for their tone (worrisome, neutral, not worrisome), and for the quality of medical data reporting.
Two investigators read and appraised the articles selected.
