Martha R. Harris, AHIP, MLS, MA
Medical Research Librarian
VERDICT/South Texas Veterans Healthcare Administration
Audie L. Murphy Division
Purpose:
You must first locate quality evidence before you can integrate it with clinical expertise to guide practice. Clinical professionals seeking to perform Evidence-Based Practice must be able to identify and retrieve the quality original studies and trials that compromise good clinical research. This presentation presents the principles of formulating the question, selecting the appropriate database(s), and preplanning the search strategy to retrieve citations that provide the best evidence.
Evidence:
Although clinical questions can often be answered by personal experience or colleague opinions, there are times that the question is too complicated and must be broken down into searchable components of a clinical question. Since bibliographical databases provide the most current information, the next step is to select the appropriate database(s) in which to search those components.
Strategy:
The strategy will depend on the database chosen since databases vary widely in scope, vocabulary, and syntax. EBP hedges can be used to restrict retrieval to include only quality studies and clinical trials.
Recommendations:
The same formulation of the clinical question, selection of the appropriate database(s), and application of proven searching principles apply either to a simple clinical question or to an encompassing evidence synthesis.
Academic Center for Evidence-Based Nursing