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Medicine for Students: Critical Appraisal

This guide contains resources to help with your study and support your research in Medicine.

Critical Appraisal

Critical appraisal is a key step in the research process. By evaluating the studies you find in your database searches, you are ensuring that you have the best evidence to use in your research.

Appraisal tools allow a clinician or researcher to assess evidence for its validity, reliability, and applicability to clinical practice. When an appraisal tool is used to evaluate an article, the article is checked for:

  • Strengths and weaknesses of the articles study design and methodology
  • Relevance to your clinical question
  • Importance of the research question being answered
  • Legitimacy of conclusions
  • Any potential conflicts of interest

Critical appraisal tools:

Risk of Bias tools:

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