Evidence-supported practice

The tagline for this blog refers to "evidence-supported practice". What is meant by this term?

The success of evidence-based medicine has led to the evidence-based model being applied in other fields. One of the most significant extensions of the concept came when Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton published their book "Hard facts, dangerous half truths and total nonsense: Profiting from evidence-based management". This influential book has sparked of a movement of evidence-based management.



The evidence-based concept has not been without its critics, both medicine related and in other areas of practice. Much of the criticism has been directed at the mindless bureaucratic application of the concepts, rather than at its merits. Other criticism focussed on what the critics considered the inability of the model to cope with complexity and contextual issues.

This debate has also raged within Psychology, reflecting to some extent the tension between "therapists" and "scientists". While the term evidence-based therapy has been used, other terms such as empirically based, empirically validated and empirically evualated therapy have also been considered. The term "empirically supported therapy" gained some support (pun not intended), as it was considered to better reflect issues of complexity and context.

I would suggest that the term "evidence-supported" would be better yet. Not all evidence is empirical and empirical methods are not appropriate in all contexts.

Googling the term "evidence-supported" in various combinations gives a small number of hits, but on "evidence-supported management" there's nothing that's analogous to Pfeffer and Sutton's EBM.

We have been experimenting in a special school with the implementation of evidence-supported practices in a number of ways. These include encouraging staff (teachers and therapists) to apply evidence-supported principles in their work. We are also starting to implement the principles of evidence-supported management in the school's management, based on the work of Pfeffer and Sutton. Lastly, we're working on improving the critical thinking skills of our learners.

I'll expand on these issues in future posts.