Searching the medical literature
The Royal Children’s Hospital Library
www.rch.org.au/library
Poh Chua x 55107
poh.chua@rch.org.au
Oct 2014
Library membership
• Join the library to borrow items.
• Register at the library, or download the library membership
form at www.rch.org.au/library/membership.php.
• NB: To use most of the library resources from home, you will
need to *register for Athens at
https://register.athensams.net/chc/. Once you have completed
the online form, you will see a confirmation with your
username. You will also receive an email which you have to
authenticate to set your password.
*All Athens registrations must be done on site unless you are using @rch or @mcri email
addresses.
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Goals
• To search for evidence-based care related
literature in a variety of databases
• To become familiar with the strengths and
weaknesses of different databases
• To become familiar with different search
techniques for different databases.
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Step 1: The question
• In patients with conjunctivitis (population)
• does antibiotic treatment (intervention)
• compared with no treatment, or delayed treatment (comparison)
• reduce the severity and duration of conjunctivitis (outcome)
A question of therapy.
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Step 2: Using the question to
identify search terms
• Population – conjunctivitis (Medical Subject
Headings , MeSH)
• Intervention – anti-bacterial agents (MeSH)
• Comparator – placebo
• Outcome – conjunctivitis (MeSH)
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Step 3: Choosing the database
Search the resources in the order listed:
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ClinicalKey; ww2.rch.org.au/library/dbases.php#ebl
OvidMD; ww2.rch.org.au/library/dbases.php#ebl
BMJ Best Practice; ww2.rch.org.au/library/dbases.php#ebl
DynaMed; ww2.rch.org.au/library/dbases.php#ebl
Cochrane Library; ww2.rch.org.au/library/dbases.php#ebl
SumSearch2; ww2.rch.org.au/library/dbases.php#ebl
Ovid Medline, Ovid Embase; EbscoHost Medline; EbscoHost Cinahl; limiting to Clinical Queries;
ww2.rch.org.au/library/dbases.php#journalref. Alternatively, use
PubMed’s Clinical Queries (under ‘PubMed tools’ on the PubMed home
page).
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ClinicalKey
• Searches the following: books, journals, the Clinics of North America series of
journals, patient education, drugs, multimedia and guidelines.
• Off-site access is via Athens.
• Use asterisk* for truncation/wildcard.
• Supports the use of parentheses ( ).
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ClinicalKey
• Register/Login to use the Presentation Maker and
to add items to the Reading List.
• Content type ‘Journals’ denotes available in Full
text, as opposed to content type MEDLINE,
which is not the full text but means is indexed in
Medline. Vitals is a succinct, point-of-care
content type relatively new to ClinicalKey. It is
summarised information taken from the Clinics of
North America. Vitals are still in Beta ‘testing’
phase.
OvidMD
• Searches the following: books, journals, patient
education, drugs, guidelines and UpToDate
(subscription required to view full text).
• Off-site access is via Athens.
• Use asterisk* for truncation/wildcard.
• Supports the use of parentheses ( ).
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OvidMD
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BMJ Best Practice
• Off-site access is via Athens.
• Find the information you need by using: Show conditions, or
the Search BMJ Best Practice box.
• Each topic is divided into the following sections: Highlights,
Basics, Prevention, Diagnosis, Treatment, Follow Up, and
Resources.
• In the Treatment section, there may be an Evidence subsection
with links to Clinical Evidence.
• Use asterisk* for truncation/wildcard.
• Does not support the use of parentheses ( ).
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DynaMed
• Athens login is required for off-site access.
• DynaMed is a point-of-care reference resource designed to provide
clinicians with the best available evidence to support clinical
decision-making.
• DynaMed is available as a mobile application, compatible with
devices such as the Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad and iPod
touch, just to name a few. For more information, see
http://dynamed.ebscohost.com/access/mobile.
• Search DynaMed using: the Search box, Browse A-Z, or Browse
Categories.
• Use asterisk* for truncation/wildcard.
• Supports the use of parentheses ( ).
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DynaMed
DynaMed
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Cochrane Library
• See Library fact sheet no. 5 at
ww2.rch.org.au/library/factsheets.php.
• Must search both keywords and thesaurus (MeSH).
• Remember to add search query to Search Manager
(equivalent to Search History).
• Use asterisk* for truncation/wildcard.
• Supports the use of parentheses ( ).
• Access is free to everyone in Australia.
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Cochrane Library
Use Advanced Search to
search The Cochrane
Library
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Cochrane Library search history
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SUMSearch 2
• SUMSearch2 is a free search engine.
• SUMSearch2 will search PubMed, DARE (Other Reviews in
The Cochrane Library) and the National Guideline
Clearinghouse (USA).
• Use asterisk* for truncation/wildcard.
• Supports the use of parentheses ( ).
• Supports both keywords and MeSH (thesaurus) searching.
• Search terms will automatically be connected by ‘AND’.
• Results are listed in categories.
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SUMSearch2
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Medline / PubMed and Cinahl
• Medline is available via Ovid and EbscoHost. Athens
login is required for off-site access.
• PubMed is the free version of Medline and is
available from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed.
• Cinahl is via the EbscoHost interface. Athens login is
required for off-site access.
• Applying the appropriate clinical queries in Ovid,
PubMed and EbscoHost is an effective way to limit
search results.
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Limiting to Clinical Queries in Ovid
Use Additional Limits icon to
access Clinical Queries options
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Limiting to Clinical Queries in Ovid
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Limiting to Clinical Queries in PubMed
Select Clinical Queries
in PubMed Tools
Enter search terms into
the search box
Select the required
Category and Scope
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Limiting to Clinical Queries in EbscoHost
Use Edit to access Clinical
Queries options
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Limiting to Clinical Queries in EbscoHost
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Step 4: Evaluate search results from
various databases
Relevant trials?
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