One of the greatest challenges to all practitioners working in modern healthcare is simply keeping ahead of the tsunami of information that threatens to bury them under a mountain of paper—or perhaps the modern equivalent, an electronic reading list that only ever increases in length. In an article written in the 1990s, Sackett et al estimated then that the required reading for a doctor working in general medicine was equivalent to 19 articles per day, 365 days a year (Sackett et al 1996). In 2014, the advent of the internet has vastly increased the potential information overload. This article discusses the transition from ‘eminence-based medicine’ to ‘evidence-based medicine’, outlines the six levels of the hierarchy of evidence and educates aesthetic nurses on interpreting clinical research papers.

Annie Cartwright - Advanced Aesthetic Nurse Practitioner, Skin and Face Clinics, Cardiff.