The purpose of this paper is to situate the predominant medical model of Evidence Based Health Care (EBHC) in a processual framework by construing the organization of health care knowledge as non-linear, rhizomic communication. The paper is based on a theoretically driven, empirically based account of specific microprocesses of health care research and the particular settings in which those processes take place. We show how the production and appropriation of health care knowledge breaks out, cuts across and complicates simple lines of information transfer and dissemination. The boundary between research and practice is not seen simply as a frontier between two totally different realms, but rather as an interconnection between different patterns of relationality. It is this point that EBHC commentaries often miss. They typically see ‘research’ and ‘practice’ as pre-established forms, because both appear to enjoy what amounts to an independent existence, before any philosophical questions about their inherent relatedness have been asked.
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