In this issue of American Family Physician, we are pleased to introduce an ongoing feature called

POEMs, a series that may already be familiar to many of our readers. The acronym POEMs, which
stands for Patient-Oriented Evidence that Matters, refers to summaries of valid research that are
important to physicians and to their patients. Ideally, POEMs represent information that has the
potential to change the way physicians practice medicine.

Many of us suffer from “information overload” because there simply is too much new medical
information available to process. The POEMs concept provides a filtering system, screening out
most research findings and leaving only information that is correct and relevant to everyday practice.

What type of study qualifies for a POEM? A POEM is valid research that answers “yes” to the
following three questions:

 Did the research focus on an outcome that patients care about (e.g., morbidity,
mortality, quality of life)?
 Is the problem that has been studied common and is the intervention feasible?
 Does the information have the potential to change the practice of many physicians?
The most important aspect of a POEM is that it provides information that matters to our patients.
Patients come to us with the understanding that what we do for them, or what we ask them to do, will
help them to live longer, better, or both. Our goal is to do just that.

However, much of the information available to us in medical journals is on the pathophysiology,

etiology, and prevalence of disease, and on the mechanism of action of drugs. While this information
is often helpful, it may or may not help us to do what is best for our patients. This information told us
that hormone replacement therapy lowers low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels in women, that
short-acting calcium channel blockers lower blood pressure, and that the cyclo-oxygenase-2 (COX-
2) inhibitors selectively inhibit inflammatory mechanisms of the COX-2 isoenzyme while preserving
mucosal integrity. All of these intermediate findings were determined to be misleading when new,
better-designed trials reported on patient-oriented outcomes. These POEMs contradicted the earlier
information that focused on disease processes rather than relevant outcomes.

POEMs come from research published in more than 100 clinical journals. Each month a team of
family physicians and educators comb through this literature looking for results that are relevant and
immediately applicable to practice. Potentially relevant research findings are identified and evaluated
for validity (www.infopoems.com/informationmastery.cfm). The valid POEMs are summarized,
reviewed, revised, and compiled into Info-Retriever, part of the InfoPOEMs Clinical Awareness
System (www.InfoPOEMs.com).

POEMs are similar to AFP's “Tips from Other Journals” department in that they summarize research
articles from other journals. Both share similar purposes, namely to update family physicians on
important new developments in common clinical problems and provide information that physicians
can use in day-to-day practice. But, how do they differ? For one thing, the criteria for “Tips” are
somewhat broader than the criteria for POEMs. Tips may include tables and figures from the original
article. On the other hand, POEMs are derived from a larger number of journals, they are more likely
to cover the most clinically important, outcomes-oriented research findings, and they undergo strict
validity assessment of the research. These findings are presented in a structured format, including a
level-of-evidence score, and are always accompanied by an editorial commentary (see the
accompanying table).