Evidence‐based medicine in practice: limiting or facilitating patient choice?

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Abstract
Facilitating patient choice is an important element in respecting the autonomy of patients. Evidence‐based medicine has the potential to contribute to this process by the provision of high quality research‐based information, for use by patients and clinicians. In this paper, I analyse the processes of evidence‐based medicine in order to identify the ways in which patient choice is affected by decisions made in the development and use of evidence‐based guidelines. I argue that despite the potential contribution, the current methods and techniques of guideline production limit rather than facilitate patient choice.