Finding the best evidence
Owen Coxall
Bodleian Health Care Libraries
Session objectives
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Formulate a focused question
Turn a focused question into a search
Search TRIP & PubMed
Run an Advanced search on PubMed
Cochrane Library
Formulate a focussed question
Patient / Problem / Population
Intervention
Comparison
Outcome
Scenario
Tom, a smoker of 20 years goes to his GP to ask for help with
stopping smoking. He’s tried various methods in the past but
nothing has worked so far, so asks the GP whether
acupuncture might be a good option.
Our PICO
P = Smoking
I = Acupuncture
C = N/A
O = Stopping smoking
Is acupuncture an effective way of stopping
smoking?
Quick search: Demonstration
TRIP
www.tripdatabase.com
PubMed Clinical Queries
www.pubmed.gov
Hands-on
Formulate a focussed question
– Use your own question
– Record the search terms you’re using
Run a quick search on TRIP
www.tripdatabase.com
Run a quick search on PubMed Clinical Queries
www.pubmed.gov
Run a full search strategy: Why bother?
Too few results
Too many results
Irrelevant results
Submitting a funding proposal
Writing a guideline
Conducting a systematic review
Developing a search strategy
Take your PICO and think about:
– synonyms
– using and/or
– phrases
– truncation
Combine terms with
OR
Smoking OR tobacco – either term can be present
smoking
tobacco
Combine terms with
AND
Smoking AND acupuncture – both terms must be
present
smoking
acupuncture
Phrases and truncation
Take a common word stem and look for spelling
variations e.g.
◦ psycho* - will retrieve papers psychosis, psychoses,
psychotic…but also psychology, psychological…
Phrase searching
◦ Use double quote marks if you want words to appear
next to each other e.g.
“psychotic episode”
Develop a search strategy
Using OR then AND
to broaden then focus the search
P
smoker*
or
smoking
or
tobacco
and
I
and
acupuncture
or
acupressure
O
cessation
or
stop*
or
quit*
Perform a search on PubMed
www.pubmed.gov
Searching tips: PubMed
Subject searching - use MeSH
– Subject headings added to articles on Medline
– Search the MeSH Database
Finding similar articles – use the ‘Related articles’ link
Search the Cochrane Library
International Cochrane Collaboration
>90 countries
effects of interventions
Includes:
Full-text Systematic Reviews
Abstracts to further SRs and RCTs
Available at:
http://www.thecochranelibrary.com
Resources
Cochrane Library
www.thecochranelibrary.com
PubMed
www.pubmed.gov
TRIP
www.tripdatabase.com
Other sources – CEBM web-site – EBM tools
www.cebm.net
Help
Finding the Evidence tutorials:
– http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/medicine/information_skills/scr
eencasts
PubMed
– Short online tutorials
– Quick guides to PubMed – basics, MeSH search and MyNCBI
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/pubmed.html