Evidenced-based practice is an evolving concept

Evidence-based practice, like communication or ethical practice, is a generic skill that all professionals working in health and social care should have as part of their toolkit. There have been many books written about the subject. Recently I typed the words evidence- based practice into www.amazon.co.uk and it generated 48 hits, one of which was Evidence-based Practice for Occupational Therapists (Taylor 2000, 2007). This is a second edition of a text that has been extremely popular with occupational therapists in the United Kingdom. Whether it has been as popular internationally it is not so clear because Evidence-based Rehabilitation (Law 2002; Law & McDermid, 2008) is also well regarded. Both books have recently been updated. This update is long overdue because evidence-based practice is a relatively new and evolving field and there have been a number of developments in the past five years. These developments include a broader understanding of evidence-based practice, recognition of the complexity of using research findings in practice and a need to set evidence-based practice in the global context. This essay will discuss these developments in relation to Evidence-based Practice for Occupational Therapists as well as reflect on two issues raised by the text itself; namely whether we need uni-disciplinary texts on evidence-based practice, and the debate about the use of qualitative and quantitative research as evidence.