The Users’ Guides to the Medical Literature is a series of articles originally published in the Journal of the American Medical Association,[1] later rewritten and compiled in a textbook, now in its third edition.
[2][3] The guides provide practical, clinician-friendly advice on all aspects of evidence-based medicine.
During the late 1970s, a group of clinical epidemiologists at McMaster University including Dr. David Sackett prepared a series of articles to assist clinicians interpreting clinical research.
These articles, introducing the term "critical appraisal", appeared in the Canadian Medical Association Journal beginning in 1981.
In 1990, Dr. Gordon Guyatt introduced the term "evidence-based medicine" to stress the role of rigorous, systematic evidence from clinical research in conjunction with patients’ values and preferences in clinical decision-making.
[4] A group of academic physicians subsequently formed the international Evidence-based Medicine Working Group and published a 1992 article announcing the "new paradigm" of evidence-based medicine.
[5] The Evidence-based Medicine Working Group decided to build on the popular series in the Canadian Medical Association Journal by creating a more practical approach to applying the medical literature to clinical practice.
Championed by Dr. Drummond Rennie, an editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the result was the Users' Guides.
The guides originally consisted of 25 topics, covered in a series of 32 articles published in the Journal of the American Medical Association between 1993 and 2000, describing approaches to different types of medical questions and the study designs that may answer them.
How to Use an Article Measuring the Effect of an Intervention on Surrogate End Points.
How to Decide on the Applicability of Clinical Trial Results to Your Patient.
How to use an article on economic analysis of clinical practice.
Users’ guides to the medical literature, IX: a method for grading health care recommendations.
Users’ guides to the medical literature, II: how to use an article about therapy or prevention, A: are the results of the study valid?
Users’ guides to the medical literature, II: how to use an article about therapy or prevention, B: what were the results and will they help me in caring for my patients?
Evidence-Based Medicine: Principles for Applying the Users' Guides to Patient Care.
Using Electronic Health Information Resources in Evidence-Based Practice.
Guidelines for Determining Whether a Drug Is Exerting (More Than) a Class Effect.
Integrating Research Evidence With the Care of the Individual Patient.
Users’ Guides to the Medical Literature: XXII: How to Use Articles About Clinical Decision Rules.
How to use an article reporting variations in the outcomes of health services.
How to use an article on economic analysis of clinical practice.
Users’ Guides to the Medical Literature: XVIII.
How to Use an Article About Disease Probability for Differential Diagnosis.
Dr. Guyatt and Dr. Rennie edited the articles and compiled them to form a book titled Users' Guides to the Medical Literature: A Manual for Evidence-Based Clinical Practice.
[6] The books teach a systematic approach to reading and applying the medical literature to individual patient care.
Most of the book chapters are based on specific types of clinical questions, including questions of therapy, harm, diagnosis, and prognosis.
The Users' Guides come in two book versions: the Essentials introduces the concepts of evidence-based medicine (EBM), with which every practicing clinician should be familiar, while the Manual provides a more comprehensive, in-depth exploration of EBM concepts for clinicians seeking a deeper understanding, or for those who wish to teach EBM.
[7] The complete text of the second edition of the Users’ Guides Manual is available online by subscription.
The JAMAevidence website also includes a large number of calculators, worksheets and additional aids for the practice of EBM, including the updated and edited collection of another long-running JAMA article series, The Rational Clinical Examination: Evidence-based Clinical Diagnosis.