ABSTRACT
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) introduced a new paradigm within healthcare practice. Several derivations of EBM have emerged since Sackett et al.1 initially coined the term, including evidence-based nursing, evidence-based healthcare and evidencebased practice (EBP). EBP is currently the most commonly used term within the allied healthcare professions when referring to clinical practice based on valid, rigorous empirical evidence. Since the vast majority of healthcare curricula include units of study focused on EBP principles and applications to clinical practice, it leads to the notion that the educational methods being used to promote the learning and teaching of this body of knowledge should also be based on sound empirical evidence. In other words, the approaches and methods being used to educate future healthcare practitioners should be grounded in sound, reliable, empirically based evidence. However, while the EBP and EBM drum is being beaten with increasing fervour, it appears that less attention, less funding and fewer resources are devoted to the evidence-based education (EBE) of future healthcare practitioners. Furthermore, to add to these issues, these challenges are non-discriminate, being faced across diff erent education sectors and educational providers. Despite this, however, there is a growing number of articulate, skilled and productive health professional educational researchers (many of whom are authors within this text) who are actively contributing to the growing body of evidence in this arena.
