Correspondence:

What counts as evidence in evidence-based practice? Background. Considerable financial and philosophical effort has been expended on the evidence-based practice agenda. Whilst few would disagree with the notion of delivering care based on information about what works, there remain significant challenges about what evidence is, and thus how practitioners use it in decision-making in the reality of clinical practice. Aim. This paper continues the debate about the nature of evidence and argues for the use of a broader evidence base in the implementation of patient-centred care. Discussion. Against a background of financial constraints, risk reduction, increased managerialism research evidence, and more specifically research about effectiveness, have assumed pre-eminence. However, the practice of effective nursing, which is me-diated through the contact and relationship between individual practitioner and pa-tient, can only be achieved by using several sources of evidence. This paper outlines the potential contribution of four types of evidence in the delivery of care, namely re-search, clinical experience, patient experience and information from the local context