Includes bibliographical references and index.

Why read papers at all? -- Searching the literature -- Getting your bearings : what is this paper about? -- Assessing methodological qualit y -- Statistics for the non-statistician -- Papers that report trials o f drug treatments and other simple interventions -- Papers that report trials of complex interventions -- Papers that report diagnostic or scr eening tests -- Papers that summarise other papers (systematic reviews and meta-analyses) -- Papers that tell you what to do (guidelines) -- P apers that tell you what things cost (economic analyses) -- Papers that go beyond numbers (qualitative research) -- Papers that report questio nnaire research -- Papers that report quality improvement case studies -- Getting evidence into practice.