The ever-expanding volume of medical literature makes it more difficult to keep up with current clinical information. In addition, the physician's knowledge of up-to-date care is inversely correlated with the amount of time since graduating from medical school. These facts, and the observation that traditional Continuing Medical Education programs are not successful in improving clinical performance, emphasise the need for physicians to acquire the skills necessary to appraise the literature critically so that the best quality evidence can be selected and applied to clinical care. Evidence- based medicine is becoming an increasingly important new paradigm because of its ability to assist clinicians in making decisions about clinical management. This approach has resulted in the traditional, opinion-based review article becoming less useful and is now being replaced by the more structured, systematic review which is a synthesis of information n a clinical area using scientific principles. The skills necessary for learning and practising evidence based medicine are not difficult to learn and should be acquired so that the concepts of good clinical practice and good clinical research can be integrated into an approach to clinical decision making that is effective and appropriate.