LIB202: Enhancing skills for systematic reviews: Part 1
Searching healthcare databases
Target group
Staff and students in Health Schools who are undertaking or planning to undertake a
systematic review.
Participants should also attend Enhancing skills for systematic reviews: Part 2:
Advanced search techniques and tools for systematic reviews.
Prior learning
Prerequisites: King's username and password.
Please help us gauge your information needs in advance of attending the session by
completing the pre-course assessment form
Overall aim
The aim of this course is to explore the range of key medical/biomedical and health
databases available, and to provide advice on advanced search techniques. The
format is presentation, discussion and hands-on.
Key areas
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plan and design an effective search strategy
identify key healthcare databases and their content e.g. Medline
understand the value of keyword and subject heading searches
effective use of truncation and Boolean Operators
find full text research articles
ability to print, save and email your searches
explore other related key databases and web resources e.g. Web of Science,
Scopus, and summaries of evidence (The Cochrane Library)
Enhancing information skills for systematic reviews
Advanced search techniques and tools for systematic reviews
Aim
The overall aim of this course is to provide practical advice and support on effective
information retrieval for systematic reviews
Course description
This course includes: planning an effective search systematic review strategy
(including examples of good practice), key sources of published and unpublished
literature, managing and documenting results, and further sources of support.
It is not intended to cover other aspects of producing a systematic review, e.g.
statistical analyses.
The format is presentation, discussion and hands-on.
Prerequisites:
Attendees should have experience of searching healthcare databases for literature,
as this course focuses on the additional skills needed to conduct systematic reviews,
and will not cover the basics of database searching. Please see our introduction to
healthcare databases course.
Course length
Two and a half hours.
Learning objectives
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Know what a systematic review is and why you might want to do one
Understand the importance of having a clear goal and asking a clear question
in your review
Know how to draw up an effective search strategy for your review
Know where to look for published and unpublished literature for your review
Be aware of how you can organise your results
Understand the importance of recording your search properly
Know where to go for further information and support