The Hokkaido Centre for Family Medicine, Japan case study
The Hokkaido Centre for Family Medicine in Japan has long believed in the value of evidence to support its practice and staff have referred to it for many years to keep their knowledge current.
- Easy access to high quality sources of evidence
- Information to help manage and treat patients confidently
- A powerful approach to evidence based medicine
The Centre is looking at how staff can apply evidence based knowledge more effectively in their day-today practice. Dr Tesshu Kusaba shares his mission for the centre. “It is the aim of our centre to provide continuous education opportunities for our doctors. However it is also important that this knowledge is effectively put into practice and communicated clearly to our community. This is where evidence-based medicine can have great power”.
A trusted source of knowledge
The Centre has access to many journals and online resources and staff return to BMJ Clinical Evidence, on a regular basis when they want to reference the latest research evidence. Dr Tesshu Kusaba explains, “It is the quality of critical appraisal that we believe sets BMJ Best Practice apart and makes it the best resource available for updating knowledge.”
A trusted approach to decision support
Therefore, it was a logical decision for the centre to select BMJ Best Practice. It has been purposefully designed to give clinicians direct access to the latest research evidence, expert opinion and guidelines. Through one simple resource it provides practical support for more than 10,000 diagnoses and related treatment decisions.
“You can spend a lot of time searching through journals and text book-based resources,” Dr Tesshu Kusaba notes, “but as a busy family medical centre we need quick and easy access to high quality sources of evidence.”
He adds “It is only when you can access the relevant evidence about the condition you are faced with, that you can really start to draw out the benefits from the research. BMJ Best Practice has allowed us to act upon new evidence and combine it with a mix of other medical resources including expert opinion and guidelines.”
An instant second opinion
Since they took out their BMJ Best Practice subscription, the Medical Centre has really started to exploit the true potential of BMJ Best Practice and on average practitioners are already referring to it four to five times a week.
“The content in BMJ Best Practice is very useful to me in my day-to-day practice,” explains Dr Tesshu Kusaba. “The topics covered are presented in a very clear and concise manner and when I am not sure of an answer I can consult BMJ Best Practice quickly and it provides the information I need.
For example, I recently saw a man who had herpes zoster. I wanted to use an antiviral agent on him, but I was slightly unsure as to how long I should use it. So I went to BMJ Best Practice , selected the condition and went to the treatment part.
Without delay, I found the latest evidence and guidelines on the most appropriate course of action. The navigation and design of BMJ Best Practice allows me to get to the information I need quickly and that has really impressed me.”
Exploring the potential of Evidence-Based Medicine, BMJ Best Practice is proving to be a big success and is being integrated into day-to-day workflows more and more across the practice. “We feel that one of the biggest benefits of BMJ Best Practice is that we are now actually in a position to exploit the evidence that is out there to support our practice. With BMJ Best Practice, very useful to me in my day-to-day practice, we can still reference the latest evidence, but more importantly we can easily select the topic that is of interest to us from the front screen and then find the supporting information to help us manage and treat our patients confidently and effectively. And that is the most important thing.”
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