Evidence-based palliative care : how can we account for the messy world of practice?

The authors of the January editorial drew our attention to the need for a 'critical yet pragmatic approach to applying evidence in complex healthcare situations that are as dependent on context, human interactions and sense-making as on clinical sciences'.1 Rather than revisiting intractable debates about the relative value of one form of evidence over another, we seek in this editorial, to continue to deliberate on the aforementioned complexities of practice as they relate to evidence-based palliative care.