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The Virtues of Evidence

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Abstract

Evidence-based medicine has beendefined as the conscientious and judicious useof current best evidence in making clinicaldecisions. This paper will attempt to explicatethe terms ``conscientious'' and ``judicious''within the evidence-based medicine definition.It will be argued that ``conscientious'' and``judicious'' represent virtue terms derived fromvirtue ethics and virtue epistemology. Theidentification of explicit virtue components inthe definition and therefore conception ofevidence-based medicine presents an importantstarting point in the connection between virtuetheories and medicine itself. In addition, aunification of virtue theories andevidence-based medicine will illustrate theneed for future research in order to combinethe fields of virtue-based approaches andclinical practice.

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Zarkovich, E., Upshur, R. The Virtues of Evidence. Theor Med Bioeth 23, 403–412 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021217908383

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