Library Guides: ES/PH/SRA 625: Research Design and Evaluation: Databases for finding articles

Databases for finding articles

Head of Research and Instruction & Associate Professor

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106-A J.D. Williams Library
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Evidence Based Practice

Introduction to EBP
This tutorial was developed by staff at Duke University Medical Center Library and the Health Sciences Library at UNC Chapel Hill. Modules include: Intro to EBP, Acquire, Therapy, Diagnosis, Prognosis, Harm, and Systematic Reviews

In a clinical environment, Evidence Based Practice (EBP) is a thoughtful integration of the best available evidence, coupled with clinical expertise.

Silagy and Haines (1998) describe evidence-based health care as an approach that 'takes account of evidence at a population level as well as encompassing interventions concerned with the organisation and delivery of health care'.

Reference:
Silagy, C & Haines, A 1998, Evidence-based practice in primary care, London, BMJ Books.

Evidence Based Medicine Worksheet

PICO Method

PICO Method

P: Patient, Problem or Population – What are the most important characteristics of the patient and their health status?

I: Intervention – What main intervention are you considering (medical, surgical, preventative)

C: Comparison – What are the alternative benchmark or goldmark standards being considered, if any?

O: Outcome – What is the estimated likelihood of a clinical outcome attributable to a specific disease, condition or injury?

T: Type of Question/Study – You can have questions of different types. They can be categorized as a diagnosis, prognosis, therapy, etiology/harm, or prevention question. What study design would best answer the question: randomized controlled trial; cohort study; case controlled study; case series; case series; case report etc.

Videos

Databases to find Articles

Cochrane Library This link opens in a new window
Includes reliable evidence from Cochrane and other systematic reviews, clinical trials, and results of the worlds best medical research studies. The Cochrane Reviews are provided in full text.
MEDLINE (via Ebsco) This link opens in a new window
National Library of Medicine's premier database in the life sciences, with a concentration in biomedicine.
PubMed This link opens in a new window
The PubMed database contains more than 34 million citations and abstracts from the biomedical literature. PubMed facilitates searching across three National Library of Medicine resources: MEDLINE (includes Medical Subject Headings: MeSH), PubMed Central, and Bookshelf.
CINAHL Plus with Full Text This link opens in a new window
CINAHL Plus with Full Text is the world's most comprehensive source for nursing and allied health journals, providing full text for more than 770 journals indexed in CINAHL.
Embase This link opens in a new window
Embase is a comprehensive biomedical database that focuses on drugs and pharmacology, medical devices, clinical medicine, and basic science relevant to clinical medicine.
Scopus This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive abstract and citation database containing both peer-reviewed research literature and quality web sources. With over 18,000 titles from more than 5,000 international publishers, Scopus supports research needs in the scientific, technical, medical and social sciences fields as well as in the arts and humanities. Scopus does not test or support Mac/IoS Devices. Scopus recommends IE 8 or higher, Chrome or Firefox.
SPORTDiscus This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive source of full text for sports & sports medicine journals
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Provides a search of scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources, including articles, theses, books, and abstracts.

PubMed Clinical Queries
This tool uses predefined filters to help you quickly refine PubMed searches on clinical or disease-specific topics. These specialized searches for include: COVID-19 Articles, Clinical Study Categories, and Medical Genetics

Types of Reviews

A literature review is a very practical part of the research process. It's how you build on other research in the field - identify best practices and tools and learn what doesn't work. I'm happy to help you find articles to build up your topic's literature review. Also, take a look at the literature reviews you find in scholarly articles you read to get a good idea of how to structure your own and find more articles.

There are several different kinds of articles frequently found in the literature for medical and health sciences.

Case report – a description of a particular service or event, often focusing on unusual aspects of the reported situation or adverse occurrences.
Case series – a description of more than one case.
Case-control study – An observational study in which the cases have the issue of interest but the controls do not.
Cohort study – An observational study of a particular group over a period of time.
Randomized Controlled Trial – An experimental study in which users are randomly allocated to one of two or more options, where some get the option of interest and others get another option (e.g. a standard service).
Scoping review - A type of knowledge synthesis that uses a systematic and iterative approach to identify and synthesize an existing or emerging body of literature on a given topic. The key differences between systematic reviews and scoping reviews are differing purposes and aims. The purpose of a scoping review is to map the body of literature on a topic area. The purpose of a systematic review is to sum up the best available research on a specific question.
Systematic review – An approach that involves capturing and assessing the evidence by some systematic method, where all the components of the approach and the assessment are made explicit and documented. Some systematic reviews include a meta-analysis (see below).
Meta-analysis - A method of synthesising the data from more than one study, in order to produce a summary statistic.

Content Contributor: Booth A & Brice A (2004) Evidence Based Practice for Information Professionals: A Handbook. London: Facet Publishing.

Conducting Literature Searches

When conducting literature searches, you should know that the average time to complete is about 44 hours! (UNC Health Sciences Library).

When you design a search strategy to find all of the articles related to your research question. You will:

Define the main concepts of your topic
Choose which databases you want to search
List terms to describe each concept
Add terms from controlled vocabulary like MeSH
Use field tags to tell the database where to search for terms
Combine terms and concepts with Boolean operators AND and OR
Translate your search strategy to match the format standards for each database
Save a copy of your search strategy and details about your search

There are many factors to think about when building a strong search strategy for systematic reviews.

For PRISMA, there are specific items you will want to report from your search. For this step, review the PRISMA-S checklist.

PRISMA-S for Searching
Specify all databases, registers, websites, organizations, reference lists, and other sources searched or consulted to identify studies. Specify the date when each source was last searched or consulted. Present the full search strategies for all databases, registers and websites, including any filters and limits used.
For information on how to document database searches and other search methods on your PRISMA flow diagram, visit our FAQs "How do I document database searches on my PRISMA flow diagram?" and "How do I document a grey literature search for my PRISMA flow diagram?"

When designing and conducting literature searches, a librarian can help advise you on:

How to create a search strategy with Boolean operators, database-specific syntax, subject headings, and appropriate keywords
How to apply previously published systematic review search strategies to your current search
How to test your search strategy's performance
How to translate a search strategy from one database's preferred structure to another

EXAMPLE: