Evidence-Based Medicine: A Genealogy of the Dominant Science of Medical Education

J Med Humanit. 2016 Dec;37(4):449-473. doi: 10.1007/s10912-016-9398-0.

Abstract

Debates about how knowledge is made and valued in evidence-based medicine (EBM) have yet to understand what discursive, social, and historical conditions allowed the EBM approach to stabilize and proliferate across western medical education. This paper uses a genealogical approach to examine the epistemological tensions that emerged as a result of various problematizations of uncertainty in medical practice. I explain how the problematization of uncertainty in the literature and the contingency of specific social, political, economic, and historical relations allowed the EBM approach to become a programmatic and pedagogical focus of the Faculty of Medicine at McMaster University and beyond.

Keywords: clinical judgment; evidence-based medicine; genealogy; medical education; uncertainty.

MeSH terms

  • Education, Medical*
  • Evidence-Based Medicine*
  • Humans
  • Judgment
  • Science*
  • Uncertainty*