ABSTRACT
It is increasingly the case that clinicians are being required to justify their methods of treatment. This demonstration of efficacy through the use of well-controlled clinical trials which report objective outcomes is also known as evidence-based practice (EBP), or as Finn (2003a, p. 209) puts it: “An evidence-based framework can be described as an empirically-driven, measurement-based, client-sensitive approach for selecting treatments.” Professional bodies that govern clinical practice are increasingly taking on board EBP concepts. In the UK, the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists has recently established clinical guidelines based on existing clinical practice which is well documented, and has built EBP-related aims into its strategic plan. Similarly, EBP has become central to the agendas of professional bodies in the USA (ASHA) and Canada (CASLPA, Canadian Association of Speech Language Pathologists & Audiologists), whilst Australia already has an established tradition of combining the efforts of clinicians, researchers and statisticians to produce EBP data, demonstrated in some recent publications. Examples of these include Evidence-based Practice in Speech Pathology (Reilly, Douglas, & Oates, 2004) and a recent edition of the national journal Advances in Speech-Language Pathology which featured a number of articles on the subject.
