Guidelines to Evidence-Based Practice for Caregivers

Guidelines to Evidence-Based Practice for Caregivers

The term evidence-based has often dominated debates and conversations with allied health providers and medical professionals, especially when dealing with long-term conditions such as autism spectrum disorder. Evidence-based practice or evidence-based is often used in relation to choosing an intervention; however, not many people understand what it means.

Understanding Evidence-Based Practice According to the American Psychological Association, evidence-based in psychology as the integration of the most

suitable research with clinical expertise with regard to the patient's culture, characteristics, and preferences. A simplified version states that clinicians must implement their own clinical expertise while leveraging the available research based on the client's individual needs and preferences.

Evidence-based practice also refers to the process used to review, analyze and translate the latest scientific research.

EBP is considered the cornerstone of clinical practice and is designed to improve the quality of care and patient results.

How to ascertain if your Child's Clinician is Using Evidence-Based Practice According to Benner (1984), clinical expertise is a combination of theoretical and practical knowledge. In simpler terms, a medical professional or health care provider's background, licensure and certificates combined with their hands-on experience gives them the required expertise to make the right choice with regard to the client’s interests.

Before developing a treatment approach, the clinician needs to engage the client or caregiver. This way, they can understand the patient's likes and dislikes and observe the patient's reaction to various stimuli firsthand. A one-on-one approach allows the clinician to discuss with the client or caregiver all the intervention options before implementation, especially when dealing with cases such as autism spectrum disorder.

To ascertain if the clinician is employing the best available evidence-based practice, especially in the disability and autism

sectors, their research must touch on specific interventions and grouping as follows: ●Empirically supported treatments (ESTs) ●Emerging treatments ●Unsupported interventions The American Psychological Association (2006) defines empirically supported treatments as specific interventions that have proven effective and have been subjected to comprehensive studies, for example, randomized control trials with positive outcomes.

Regardless of the approach, clinicians should leverage their academic knowledge, experience, client preferences, and empirically supported interventions to make clinical decisions.

It's best to note that these decisions directly impact the patient's treatment goals and approach to achieving these goals. If the clinician can provide evidence of this three-phased approach in their clinical work, then they have employed evidence-based practice.

Who decides which Interventions are EvidenceBased?

A recent review on the effectiveness of interventions, especially when dealing with disability and autism spectrum disorder, was carried out by the National Clearinghouse on Autism Evidence and Practice (NCAEP; 2020). However, prior to this, publications from the National Autism Centre and Wong et al. (2015) were used for categorization.

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