All About Searching the Medical Literature

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All About Searching the Medical Literature

• Karen Knight, M.S.L.S.
• kknight_at_virginia.edu
• Medical Education Librarian
• Claude Moore Health Sciences Library

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A World of Resources Available

• Whats your question?
• Whats your need?
• Background information
• Current clinical information
• Comprehensive literature review
• Results from recent research
• Whats your strategy for keeping current with the
  literature continuing to come out on your topic?

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Good Background Information Sources include

• Up to Date
• InfoPOEMs The Clinical Awareness System
• MD Consult
• Stat!Ref

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Three Databases of Primary Interest for
Clinical Investigation

• Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews DARE
  (Database of Reviews of Effects)
• MEDLINE
• Ovid or PubMed
• Web of Science

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Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews

• Available from the Librarys 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)

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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.

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Are corticosteroids beneficial in treating
infants with bronchiolitis?
COCHRANE
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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

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Which Do I Use?
PubMed

• National Library of Medicines database MEDLINE
  is available through several search interfaces
• Two most common search options are
• Ovids MEDLINE
• National Library of Medicines PubMed

Ovid MEDLINE
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Locate articles on therapy for renal failure in
the intensive care unit.
MEDLINE
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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

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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.

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Web of Science

• Once known as Science Citation Index
• Multidisciplinary in coverage
• Humanities
• Social Sciences
• Life Sciences
• Unique feature is cited reference searching

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Web of Science I want to locate articles
about obesity and gastroesophageal reflux
disease
WEB OF SCIENCE
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For More Help with Searching Ovid MEDLINE, go to
MEDLINE The Magnificent 7 Search Steps
PDF http//www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/intern
et/library/services/education/7steps.pdf
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For More Help with Searching PubMed, go to
Searching PubMed PDF http//www.healthsystem.vir
ginia.edu/internet/library/services/education/hand
out-PubMed.pdf
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For More Help with Searching Web of Science, go
to
Web of Science tutorial http//www.thomsonisi.co
m/tutorials/wos7/