More evidence for clinical practice

Brandenburg an der Havel/Neuruppin, 1 February 2021

The EU project “Evidence Implementation in Clinical Practice” (EICP) is the first Erasmus+ project for strategic partnerships to start at the centre for orthopaedics and trauma surgery of the Brandenburg Municipal Hospital (university clinic of the Brandenburg Medical School).

Dr. Robert Prill and partners in the field of Evidence-Based Healthcare (EBHC) from Czechia, Croatia and Poland jointly prepared and submitted the proposal. The EICP project aims to improve qualifications of European project partners for the implementation and application of evidence-based healthcare. Collaboration and exchange of know-how in the context of the Evidence Implementation Training programme are the core elements.

Project coordinator Dr. Robert Prill is also in charge of evidence-based research activities and subsequent implementation. Currently, so Prill, there is no other training programme in Europe with a comparable focus on the implementation of evidence in practice: “The programme conveys to health experts all over Europe the competences to gain experience in the implementation of evidence in practical care. This is especially important since clinical practice in some sectors of healthcare seems to lag more than two decades behind scientific advances. Critical thought and a reflective approach to evidence are key elements of evidence-based healthcare in view of the fact that over one million new papers are published in the health database PubMed every year.”

One project partner is the Czech National Centre for Evidence-Based Healthcare and Knowledge Translation in Brno/Czechia, one of the few European institutions with coaches who are qualified and licensed to convey the programme contents. Experts at the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI), University of Adelaide/Australia, who in their own words are the leaders worldwide in the field of EBHC developed the programme. Further partners are the University of Split School of Medicine in Split/Croatia and the Institute for Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine in Krakow/Poland. Both institutions are sites of the Cochrane network and internationally renowned in the EBHC community.

Most important among the immediate effects of the project are enhanced professional expertise and academic qualifications for participants, social and economic benefits and also international networking. According to Dr. Prill, the Best Practice Implementation Projects (BPIPs) serve to improve the current practice of care, with indirect positive implications for the economic dimension of healthcare and thus a reduction of burdens on the health system.

32 fellows (8 from each institution involved) participate in the programme. One of the first MHB participants is Dr. Felix Mühlensiepen from the MHB Centre for Health Services Research who is going to address “Advance Care Planning” and monitor the transfer of recent evidence into clinical practice as part of an implementation project. Dr. Robert Prill will act as mentor to the fellows and in addition work on a project of patient information prior to total knee endoprosthetics.

A total of 32 projects on evidence implementation are scheduled to be realised in the context of the EICP programme.

Here is additional information.