ABSTRACT
Evidence-based medicine' is often quoted as 'the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of the current best evidence in making decisions about the medical care of the individual patients'. This chapter discusses what might constitute an evidence base for primary care ethics and what might constitute its use for the process of ethical decision-making. It reflects on the forms of evidence that make up 'ethics' in practice. The chapter considers some of the ways in which quantitative and qualitative empirical research claims to inform healthcare ethics, two ways of 'systematically' reviewing literature for worthwhile healthcare ethics content and an account that combines the normative and the empirical as a single methodological research approach. The evidence base which appears to be common in the UK primary healthcare education is similar to that which informs undergraduate medical education. Empirical disciplines do not explicitly claim to justify how people ought to behave or what people ought to do ethically speaking.
