Diet and nutrition are challenging to study. Registered healthcare professionals use evidence to inform practice and decisions about treatment and care.
One purpose of the Knowledge Hub is to provide a single place for the evidence on nutrition and COVID-19 recovery. This helps support evidence-based practice for healthcare professionals and patients.
What is evidence-based practice?
All healthcare professionals are taught to use evidence-based practice. Such practice uses effective, scientifically validated treatment to meet an individual patient's needs.
Evidence-based practice uses the best available evidence from research, clinical knowledge and expertise to make decisions about patient care.
Research studies tell us how well a treatment works for the group of people it is tested on. These studies help healthcare professionals decide which treatments to use for people with a particular condition.
How do healthcare professionals decide on a treatment?
A healthcare professional will recommend a treatment using evidence from research studies, their own expertise and experience, and the patient’s personal preferences and knowledge about what they need.
Healthcare professionals should consider patients’ preferences and individual circumstances when recommending treatment. This supports a personalised treatment plan.
How to find trusted information on health and nutrition
How each person responds to changes in diet varies. What works for one person may not work for another. This makes it difficult to give hard and fast defined advice. Beware of those who claim to have nutritional or dietary solutions for all.
Here are some links to advice about how to find trusted information:
- This 10-minute talk by a specialist dietitian helps you to better understand how to find trusted information on nutrition and health.
- The Patient Information Forum (PIF) gives advice on how to find trusted health information. It talks about AI, social media, clinical evidence and warning signs for false information. The 'PIF tick' on information means that it comes from a trusted organisation.
- You can learn more about how to find reliable, scientific information about food and nutrition on the Future Learn course 'Food and Nutrition: The Truth Behind Food Headlines'.
- Sense about Science challenges the misrepresentation of science and evidence. They often work with others to hold those responsible to account. Positive results from clinical trials (research) are more likely to be published than negative ones. However, there is growing pressure for all trial results to be shared, which will improve transparency. A TEDx Talk called 'The hidden side of clinical trials' can help you understand more about how trials work and what we can learn from them. It may also help you to think about questions to ask when talking to a health professional about trials.
- Ask for Evidence is a public campaign helping you to ask for the evidence behind health claims, news stories, adverts and policies. Take a look at the Ask for Evidence website for more advice on how to ask for and understand the evidence.
- The term ‘bad science’ is used for articles or adverts that mislead you about the science or research. Spotting bad science can be difficult. To find out more about how to do this, take a look at the Rough Guide to Spotting Bad Science [PDF].
- The United Nations launched a global campaign called “Verified” in May 2020. This uses a double-tick yellow circle to help show trusted UN information about science.