How Do I?> find the best evidence for clinical care?

How do I find the best evidence for clinical care?

Answer

Use UVa’s evidence-based medical search systems to retrieve information to support your clinical decisions.

Contents

Introduction

The goal of evidence-based medicine is to integrate clinical expertise with the best available external evidence from systematic research in making decisions about the care of individual patients. Evidence-based medical information must have three attributes to make it useful in daily clinical practice: it must be relevant to everyday practice, it must be correct, and it should require little work to obtain it. The following search systems will help reduce the work needed to find information based upon valid and reliable evidence.

Resources

Search for pre-appraised evidence-based medical reviews from one of the four sources listed below:

  • The Cochrane Library: The systematic reviews prepared by the international Cochrane Collaboration and found in the Library represent the highest level of evidence on which to base clinical treatment decisions. One can browse the newest systematic reviews added each quarter or search for specific topics to see if a systematic review or meta-analysis exists.
  • Essential Evidence Plus: One search across multiple evidence-based information systems provides bottom-line answers that are clearly assigned with their level of evidence.
  • National Guidelines Clearinghouse: The National Guidelines Clearinghouse is an initiative of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and presents a searchable database of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines from a multitude of agencies. This database offers both browse and search functions.
  • MEDLINE-PubMed Database:
    • Clinical Queries will limit your MEDLINE retrieval with research methodology filters.
    • Systematic Reviews will limit your MEDLINE retrieval to systematic reviews and meta-analysis studies.

For more information about evidence-based medicine, see the University of Virginia’s Center for Information Mastery site.

Help

For additional information about finding evidence-based information please contact Karen Knight at 924-0056, or Ask a Librarian here or at hslref@virginia.edu .

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