Why Critical Appraisal Is Important

It is very well said that health is wealth. Everyone wants to enjoy life with good health. If someone gets sick, they seek personal attention from physicians. They desire that physician should give some medicine which should act quickly and they become healthy as early as possible.

As conditions of disease vary from individual to individual due to age factor and concurrent conditions, individualization is the need of the hour. These days, lots of variations exist in persons’ requirements, so physicians prefer individualization of treatment. Hence, for this physicians also require evidence to confirm that the treatment they are thinking is the best suited treatment for the patient. In this scenario, evidence based medicine comes into picture. It is an approach which helps physicians in selecting best evidence available out of all evidences, to choose the treatment which best suits the patient. It helps the physician to strengthen their decision making processes, by application of findings of scientific research, to individual patients’ requirements.

Physicians should be able to select the appropriate literature, evaluate the findings and results of the study, and understand whether the conditions match with the circumstances of patient. Most importantly, they should be able to find out whether the study is valid or not. Here, critical appraisal plays an important role. All these skills are known as critical appraisal skills.

Critical appraisal is one of the most important tools used in evidence based medicine. Critical appraisal means analytical evaluation. It helps us to find out the best evidence required in some specific case. It is the process of systematic examination of research article to assess its validity, trustworthiness and usefulness in some particular circumstances.

Two most important components of critical appraisal