Introduction: For more than ten years CareSearch has supported health care professionals to access evidence in support of palliative care practice. The need for this service was and continues to be based on palliative care being a relatively young field with emerging evidence and limited pockets of established evidence-based practice.
Problem: Uptake of evidence-based guidance in health care is often less than optimal. In palliative care these problems are further compounded by the still growing and sometimes immature evidence base and the need to consider a broader range of issues in addition to clinical care.
Approach: To help the palliative care workforce make greater use of what evidence is available the CareSearch team has made major changes to how this is presented. This has been a key part of a broader project to re-develop the website to mirror the core interests, roles, and contexts of our audiences. It now provides context specific information via Community and Health Professional Centres, and support for the application of evidence and skill development through the Evidence Centre.
Outcomes: The Finding Evidence hub within the centre has been strengthened to provide access to the best available evidence in line with the 6S Pyramid for clinicians. Here highly accessed resources have been retained and enhanced, and new resources added in line with our quality processes. This is now complemented by an Evidence Training hub aimed at developing audience capacity to understand, build skills, and practice in line with available evidence. Together with an About Evidence hub, the Evidence Translation hub completes the centre and supports action to disseminate evidence and best practice knowledge to wherever it can make a difference.
Discussion: We discuss the new Evidence Centre within CareSearch and how health professionals can use this expanded resource to improve patient care and to develop their skills and those of their team to influence practice and policy in line with the best available evidence.