Health Sciences students, especially Nursing students, will need to use Primary Sources when finding evidence to support their clinical decision-making.
Two very useful primary sources are:
- Clinical Trials - various types of research studies involving human participants.
- Randomized Control Trials (RCT) - specific type of clinical trial characterized by the random allocation of subjects to treatment and control groups.
In an RCT two groups are randomly selected from a sample population. The Experimental or Test Group gets the intervention or new treatment being tested, and Comparison or Control Group gets the usual or conventional treatment. The point is to see if there is any difference in the outcome of each treatment. Evidence from RCTs is considered to be near the top of the evidence pyramid and therefore one of the best research methods available for finding the effects of an intervention.
