The practice of EBM consists of 5 steps:               

• Ask: Constructing a relevant, answerable question derived from the case.
• Acquire: Selecting the appropriate databases or platforms in which to conduct a search, and then finding the most relevant evidence resources, such as journal articles, books, guidelines, or other information sources.
• Appraise: Appraising the evidence you’ve acquired for its validity and applicability.
• Apply: Applying the evidence to your practice.
• Assess: Reviewing the effect of the evidence-based decision you made upon your patient’s care, and continuing to apply the previous four steps to improve your overall EBM practice.

There are two types of questions:

• Background: Refers to questions that ask for general knowledge about a disorder, test, treatment, etc.
• Clinical Foreground: Refers to questions that are specific to a patient or problem. This type of question is what you will most commonly use to find evidence to apply in your practice. A well-constructed foreground question is formatted using the PICO structure.

Melnyk, B. M., & Fineout-Overholt, E. (2011). Evidence-based practice in nursing & healthcare: A guide to best practice. Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Video from  The University of Oxford's Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM)

CINAHL offers Evidence-Based Care Sheets providing overviews for a variety of health issues. These care sheets are written for healthcare providers. Locate these by clicking on "Evidence-Based Care Sheets" on the top bar. An alphabetical list of topics appears, click the box to the left of your topic, then near the top of the screen, click the Search button (not the Browse button). While the Evidence-Based Care Sheets are written, edited, and reviewed by RNs and MDs, they are published by CINAHL Information Systems, so they are not considered journal articles. Use these for background information and helpful references.

You can view these helpful summaries by clicking on Evidence-Based Care Sheets at the top left of the CINAHL screen:

Then you'll see a screen where you can either browse for a topic alphabetically, or search for a topic using the search box:

You can view the Evidence-Based Care Sheets by checking one or more topic checkboxes, and then clicking Search at the top of the list:

Once you hit Search, you'll see a page with all the Sheets you selected:

To read the document, open the link to the PDF Full Text. From the PDF, you can print, save, or email the document to yourself:

At the end of each Evidence-Based Care Sheet, you'll find the list of sources used to write the Care Sheet under the References heading. You could look up the articles and sources used in the References list in order to find more information on the Care Sheet topic.

Critical appraisal provides a framework for evaluating individual articles to determine if the information in the article is valid and appropriate for the individual patient in your care.