Download - How to practice EBM: Finding the Evidence
How to practice EBM:How to practice EBM:Finding the EvidenceFinding the Evidence
Owen Coxall & Nia Wyn Roberts Bodleian Health Care Libraries
Session objectivesSession objectives
Formulate a focused questionTurn a focused question into a
search strategySearch PubMed
Formulate a focused Formulate a focused questionquestion
Patient / Problem / PopulationInterventionComparisonOutcome
Focused questionFocused question
P: Pregnant smokersI: nicotine replacementC: N/AO: cessation
Is nicotine replacement therapy an effective and safe smoking cessation treatment in pregnant women?
Hands-onHands-on
Formulate a focused question◦Use your own question or one of the
examples in your pack◦Record the search terms you’re
using
Run a full search strategyRun a full search strategyWhy bother?Why bother?
Too few resultsToo many resultsIrrelevant resultsSubmitting a funding proposalWriting a guidelineConducting a systematic review
P P I O
Pregnant
Pregnancy
maternal
Smoking
Smoker
Nicotine replacement
Nicotine patch
Nicotine gum
Cessation
Stop
Quit
Combine terms withCombine terms withOROR
smokingtobacco
Smoking OR tobacco – either term can be present
Combine terms withCombine terms withANDAND
Smoking AND cessation – both terms must be present
cessationsmoking
Quick tipsQuick tips
Take a common word stem and look for spelling variations e.g.
◦smok* - will retrieve papers smoking, smoker, smokers… but also smoked salmon
Phrase searching
◦Use double quote marks if you want words to appear next to each other e.g.
“smoking cessation”
Develop a search strategyDevelop a search strategy
1. pregnan* 2. smoking or smoker*3. nicotine replacement OR
nicotine patch*4. cessation OR stop* OR quit*5. 1 AND 2 AND 3 AND 4
Perform a search on PubMedPerform a search on PubMed
Searching tips: PubMedSearching tips: PubMed
Subject searching - use MeSH◦Subject headings added to articles
on Medline◦Search the MeSH Database ◦See MeSH Tutorials for more
informationFinding similar articles – use the
‘Related articles’ link
HelpHelp
Finding the Evidence tutorials:◦ EBM web-site – EBM tools – Finding the Evidence
http://www.cebm.net
PubMed◦ Short online tutorials◦ Quick guides to PubMed – basics, MeSH search and
MyNCBI
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/pubmed.html
Hands-onHands-onPractice turning PICO into search
strategy
Take your focused question:Run further searches on PubMedhttp://www.pubmed.gov