How to appraise POC tools

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Introduction

See also Point of care decision-making tools - Overview

• Usefulness Equation (see description) is worth remembering:

Since appraisal has been done already in point-of-care tools - how do we determine the validity and relevance of a given study?

• Does the selection process for journal articles (and the journal itself) include criteria for validity and relevance? (Do they look for POEMs? How much validity assessment is done before review?)
• Does the review address a focused, answerable clinical question?
• Is the abstraction of data from the original article explicit and structured? (Can you therefore not read the whole article and still feel comfortable with the validity?)
• Are there clear recommendations for the integration of this evidence into practice? (A clinical bottom line)
• Does the commentary set this evidence within a context of existing knowledge in the field? (Is this the only evidence on the question? What do other studies say?)
• Does this review use clinically relevant statistics? (NNT, NNH, likelihood ratios*)
• Is the writing clear and understandable (avoiding jargon and complicated statistics)?
• Where does this review fit in the Usefulness Equation?
• Can you apply this evidence to your patient or population?

References

• Eddy DM. Clinical decision making: from theory to practice. Designing a practice policy. Standards, guidelines, and options. JAMA 1990;263(22):3077, 3081, 3084.
• Modes of evidence retrieval: Hunting and Foraging
• Slawson DC, Shaughnessy AF. Teaching evidence-based medicine: should we be teaching information management instead?. Acad Med. 2005 Jul;80(7):685-9.
• Straus S, Haynes RB. Managing evidence-based knowledge: the need for reliable, relevant and readable resources. CMAJ April 28 2009;180:942-4.