ABSTRACT
The purpose of research is to answer a clinical question, which we all meet in our day-to-day clinical practice. For example in a patient with a wrist fracture, we might ask ourselves a number of questions: which is better to make the diagnosis, x-ray or ultrasound (diagnostic study) or whether haematoma block or a Bier’s block is a better anaesthetic (therapeutic study). To answer this we would need to perform a literature review and if we nd there is insufcient evidence to choose one over the other, it may prompt us to do a study.
