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Research on Social Work Practice
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The Four Cornerstones of Evidence-Based Practice in Social Work

Jane F. Gilgun

University of Minnesota—Twin Cities, jgilgun{at}umn.edu

The purpose of this article is to place evidence-based practice within its wider scholarly contexts and draw lessons from the experiences of other professions that are engaged in implementing it. The analysis is based primarily on evidence-based medicine, the parent discipline of evidence-based practice, but the author also draws on evidence-based nursing and evidence-based social work in the United Kingdom. It was found that the experiences of other practice professions have a great deal to offer social work practice. Similar to medicine, nursing, and our British colleagues, U.S. social work practice will benefit from increased research activity, more widespread availability of reviews of research, on-line resources, and many more training opportunities. Similar to nursing administrators, social work administrators have the responsibility to allow social work practitioners the time and training to become familiar with research relevant to their practice.

Key Words: evidence-based practice • evidence-based medicine • philosophies of science

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Research on Social Work Practice, Vol. 15, No. 1, 52-61 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/1049731504269581
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