A short history of a big idea Book

Inspired by the work of Archie Cochrane - pioneer of the concept of randomized controlled trials, and whose ideas eventually led to the development of the Cochrane Library database of systematic reviews, and the establishment of the UK Cochrane Centre in Oxford and the international Cochrane Collaboration - a man called Alan Pearson, Professor of Nursing at the University of Adelaide, saw that even where there were research findings that could inform nursing practice, they were not being used, and decided that Cochrane's principles needed to be implemented in nursing as well as medicine. He wrote a proposal for an institute that would conduct systematic reviews of nursing research and be actively involved in the dissemination and use of evidence for clinical decisions - the result was the Joanna Briggs Institute, which today remains the only organization in the world actively involved in the synthesis, transfer and utilization of evidence for clinical decision-making. This book is a record and a celebration of the Institute's evolution, its successes and its failures, its connection with service, its methodological development and its international growth across 38 countries in all five continents of the world. For anyone with a professional or personal interest in evidence-based medicine, epidemiology, clinical trials, and the history of medicine.