Finding the Evidence

Nia Wyn RobertsBodleian Health Care Libraries

Session objectives

• Formulate a focused question• Turn a focused question into a search • Search TRIP & PubMed

Formulate a focused question

Patient / Problem / PopulationInterventionComparisonOutcome

Scenario

Focused questionP: football fansI: diet or “physical activity”C: N/AO: “weight loss”

Are diet or physical activity interventions delivered through football clubs effective in promoting weight loss?

Quick search

• TRIPwww.tripdatabase.com

• Other ways of finding secondary sources:– Cochrane Library www.cochrane.org – Epistemonikos www.epistemonikos.org – NICE Evidence www.evidence.nhs.uk

• Subscription based “point of care” tools– Best Practice, DynaMed, UpToDate…

Hands-on

• Formulate a focused question– Use your own question – Record the search terms you’re using

• Run a quick search on TRIPwww.tripdatabase.com

Searching for primary studiesWhy bother?

• Too few results• Too many results• Irrelevant results• Submitting a funding proposal• Writing a guideline, assignment, report…• Conducting a systematic review

P I OFootball fan*

Football club*

Soccer fan*

Soccer club*

Diet*

“health eating”

Exercise*

“physical activity”

Weight

Bmi

“body mass index”

Combine terms with OR

Healthy eating diet

Healthy eating OR diet – either term can be present

Combine terms with AND

“weight loss” AND football – both terms must be present

footballWeight loss

Quick tipsTake a common word stem and look for

spelling variations e.g.

◦diet* - will retrieve papers diet, diets, dieting, dieted…

Phrase searching

◦Use double quote marks if you want words to appear next to each other e.g.

“physical activity”

P I O

Football fan*OR

Football club*OR

Soccer fan*OR

Soccer club*

Diet*OR

“health eating”OR

Exercise*OR

“physical activity”

WeightORBmiOR

“body mass index”

Develop a search strategy

1. football OR soccer2. Diet* OR “healthy eating” OR exercise* OR

“physical activity”3. “weight loss” OR “lose weight” OR “weight

reduction” OR bmi4. 1 AND 2 AND 3

Perform a search on PubMed

Hands on

• Run your focused search on PubMed

– Go to http://www.pubmed.gov– Click on Clinical Queries– Try out the Advanced Search– Look at the PubMed tutorials – try a MeSH search

Help• Finding the Evidence– EBM web-site – EBM tools – Finding the Evidence

http://www.cebm.net

• PubMed tutorial http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/pubmed.html

• Cochrane Library tutorialshttp://www.thecochranelibrary.com/view/0/HowtoUse.html