This autumn the University of Gothenburg will start Sweden’s first Master’s programme in evidence-based practice.
Morten Sager–on site in Almedalen–tells about the new programme.
Students will learn about reliable existing knowledge – and identify and address knowledge gaps. The new programme was presented on Tuesday in Almedalen.
The Centre for Culture and Health invited discussion: how will an evidence-based approach ensure the best care, social services and education?
The public sector faces ever-increasing demands to apply evidence-based practices in their investigations, evaluations and decisions. Evidence-based practice means that every measure in areas such as health care should be based on the best available knowledge – but the ability to identify and measure the “best knowledge” is constantly under debate.
The Centre for Culture and Health at Sahlgrenska Academy took the discussion to Almedalen and attracted a full house to a workshop on the opportunities and the downsides of evidence-based practice.
Two questions
Morten Sager, senior lecturer at the University of Gothenburg, is in charge of the new master’s programme. He began with two questions:
“Evidence-based methodology is rooted in medicine, though since it was launched in the early 1990s, has spread to many more areas. But there are still important questions searching for answers: How do we know that specific research findings from a project really are the best? Is research really the answer to the problems that regularly arise?
Morten Sager hopes that the Almedal seminar can be part of an ongoing discussion on how research and social services are related, and how we can “improve what we’re already doing”. Panelist Carl Johan Sundberg, MD, Associate Professor at Karolinska Institutet, challenged portions of the evidence project:
“The initiative must come directly from the profession. Otherwise the methodology is easily perceived as an imposition from above. Not everything in the field of medicine actually can—or even should be—measured. Moreover, evidence does not have to be purely scientific; it can also be based on proven experience.
Profession and passion
One conclusion at the seminar was that an evidence-based approach should be conducted from the standpoint of “professional passion”:
“It’s hard to find a formula and method for evidence-based practice that works for everyone. Rather, I think we should rely on people and organisations that build on personal experience and who have worked with evidence in their decisions and guidelines and really know the ropes,” said Morten Sager.
According to Sager, the new master’s programme plays an important role in this regard:
“We will teach students techniques for identifying knowledge depending on where they are in health care, education and social services. Sometimes the most important and difficult aspect is to identify what we do not know – and constructively address this knowledge gap.”
