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This course provides a brief overview of evidence-based practice (EBP) and helps explain how one might put it to use in clinical practice. Research in prosthetics and orthotics that is available can be an important component of clinical decision-making. Finding it, understanding it, and appropriately applying it can play a valuable role in patient care. EBP can be broken down into six steps that encourage practitioners to ask the right questions when reviewing the existing research: 1. Evaluate the problem 2. Formulate the appropriate question 3. Assess the available resources 4. Search the available evidence 5. Critically evaluate the evidence 6. Apply the gathered information Step 1, evaluating the problem, is discussed in this section and focuses on how practitioners acquire and apply their knowledge. You will learn about inductive and deductive reasoning and the shortcomings related to both methods. Abductive reasoning provides clinicians a model of logic that helps them reach conclusions that are inductively strong even though they may be deductively invalid. Under the abductive model, the patient should be thoroughly evaluated for his individual characteristics. Once this has been established, you can begin to apply the general rules of clinical practice that have been accumulated over time and consider the evidence for these clinical guidelines. Are they based solely on your own observations or are they further reinforced by the observation of others, including those conducting carefully controlled clinical research? By assessing the strength of the rule for that individual patient, you may be better armed to draw the appropriate clinical conclusions

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