Evidence-Based Emergency Medicine: Integrating Research Into Practice

Medical journals generally have two missions—scientist-to-scientist communication and scientist-to-practitioner communication. The former is focused on the results of individual experiments and studies. The burden of interpretation and application and integration into practice is placed directly on the reader. The busy front-line clinician may not have the time, methodologic and statistical expertise, or access to current information sources required to keep up to date with clinically important information and to incorporate new information into patient care. This issue of Annals inaugurates a new series that will adapt the philosophy, principles, and skill set of evidence-based medicine (EBM) to the unique requirements of emergency medicine in an attempt to assist practitioners in overcoming these barriers.