The Four Cornerstones of Evidence-Based Practice in Social Work

This purpose of this paper is to place evidence-based practice (EBP) within its wider scholarly contexts and to draw lessons from the experiences of other professions that are engaged in implementing it. The analysis is based primarily on evidence-based medicine, the parent discipline of evidence-based practice, but I also draw upon evidence-based nursing and evidence-based social work in the United Kingdom. I found that the experiences of other practice professions have a great deal to offer social work practice. Like medicine, nursing, and our British colleagues, U.S. social work practice will benefit from increased research activity, more wide-spread availability of reviews of research, on-line resources, and many more training opportunities. Like nursing administrators, social work administrators have the responsibility to allow social worker practitioners the time to become familiar with research relevant to their practice