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Physical Therapy Assistant: Evidence Based Practice

Guide by Kristin Snawder. Direct comments to

The 5 Steps of EBP

Evidence-based practice consists of five steps:

1. Ask  a searchable clinical question;
2. Find the best evidence to answer the question;
3. Appraise the evidence;

5. Evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the process.

Use the tabs of this LibGuide to learn:

  • how to ask a searchable clinical question;
  • what to look for;
  • where to search for the best evidence;
  • how to appraise the evidence you find.


EBP Resources

University of Toronto Centre for Evidence-based Medicine
The website that accompanies the evidence-based practice text by Sackett et al. (2000) entitled "Evidence-Based Medicine: How to practice and teach EBM". It contains links for a glossary of EBP terms, worksheets for critically appraising individual articles on diagnosis, therapy, prognosis, etc. among other resources, including handy online calculators for plugging in numbers to determine sensitivity, specificity, number needed to treat, odds ratios, etc.

What is EBP



Dr. David Sackett and his colleagues at McMasters University in Ontario, Canada, initially proposed EBM.

