All About Searching the Medical Literature

Karen Knight, M.S.L.S.kknight@virginia.edu

Medical Education LibrarianClaude Moore Health Sciences Library

A World of Resources Available

What’s your question?

What’s your need?– Background information– Current clinical information– Comprehensive literature review– Results from recent research

What’s your strategy for keeping current with the literature continuing to come out on your topic?

Good Background Information Sources include:

Up to Date InfoPOEMs: The Clinical Awareness

System MD Consult Stat!Ref

Three Databases of Primary Interestfor Clinical Investigation:

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews & DARE (Database of Reviews of Effects)

MEDLINE– Ovid or PubMed

Web of Science

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews

Available from the Library’s Home page under “Core Resources – Evidence Based Medicine” and also through Ovid

Composed of 2 databases:– Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews– Database of Reviews of Effects (DARE)

Benefits of Searching Cochrane & DARE Cochrane

– A Systematic Review identifies an intervention for a specific disease or other problem in health care, and determines whether or not this intervention works.

– Authors locate, appraise and synthesize evidence from as many relevant scientific studies as possible.

– They summarize conclusions about effectiveness.

– Systematic reviews differ from other types of reviews in that they adhere to a strict design in order to make them more comprehensive, thus minimizing the chance of bias, and ensuring their reliability.

DARE – Contains abstracts of systematic reviews and meta-analyses that have

been quality assessed. – Each abstract includes a summary of the review together with a

critical commentary about the overall quality.

Are corticosteroids beneficial in treating infants with

bronchiolitis?

COCHRANE

MEDLINE

Produced by the National Library of Medicine

Used to locate journal article citations

Largest & most popular international biomedical database – contains over 9 million bibliographic journal article references

Not full-text, but can link out to full-text if the Library has a subscription

Which Do I Use?

National Library of Medicine’s database – MEDLINE – is available through several search interfaces

Two most common search options are:– Ovid’s MEDLINE– National Library of Medicine’s PubMed

Locate articles on therapy for renal failure in the intensive

care unit.

MEDLINE

Keeping Current

Establish some saved searches in PubMed or Ovid MEDLINE on topics you wish to follow

The newest citations will be automatically emailed to you when they enter the database

Manage Your References with RefWorks

www.refworks.com UVa pays the subscription for all Web-based RefWorks -- an online research management,

writing and collaboration tool -- is designed to help researchers easily gather, manage, store and share all types of information, as well as generate citations and bibliographies.

Web of Science

Once known as Science Citation Index Multidisciplinary in coverage

– Humanities– Social Sciences– Life Sciences

Unique feature is cited reference searching

Web of Science

I want to locate articles about obesity and

gastroesophageal reflux disease

WEB OF SCIENCE

For More Help with Searching Ovid MEDLINE, go to:

MEDLINE: The Magnificent 7 Search Steps [PDF]

http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/library/services/education/7steps.pdf

For More Help with Searching PubMed, go to:

Searching PubMed [PDF]

http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/library/services/education/handout-PubMed.pdf

For More Help with Searching Web of Science, go to:

Web of Science tutorial

http://www.thomsonisi.com/tutorials/wos7/