Search Sites
GENERAL SEARCHING
TIPS:
Use our Internal Web first to see if there is a local “answer” or a department with an email address or a phone number of a contact person.
Try a tutorial on web sites wherever you can; if you learn correctly the first time, it saves time and energy, not to mention how impressed your colleagues will be with your search skills!
Taking time to learn how to build a search in an efficient and intelligent manner saves frustration and makes use of the limited time we all have.
Watch the sidetracking! It’s easy to get absorbed in something else along the way and forget what you were looking for in the first place!
Who manages the site? Look for .gov (which might also be the country extension i.e. .ca.or .uk), .org (not-for-profit agency), .edu (universities, etc.). .Com sites are not usually a first choice for health information as they are trying to sell you something.
How current is the site? It should be updated regularly for disease-related information and not older than 1-2 years. Not-for-profit sites are often run by volunteers and are not maintained as regularly.
For whom is the information written? Patient or health professional?
Check for reputable links. Do they work?
Get to Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) sites first i.e. Cochrane Collaboration. There is heaps of information out there and you will waste time trying to sift the bad from the good; to do a comprehensive critical appraisal takes as much skill as to do a good search. If you go to reputable sites such as those listed below, you stand a better chance of finding quality information.
There is much information about critical appraisal. Ask you Knowledge Brokers to put together something for you if you are interested in the basics.
Saving, printing and emailing capabilities should be on the site. Tip: from a web page, use the “save as” function on the file menu or use the save icon, give it a name that has meaning for you, then you can save it for your own use or email it as an attachment from your hard drive. Some articles use huge amounts of paper and maybe we don’t need to print everything!
This is only the “tip of the iceberg”. If you wish to dig deeper into this world of information and knowledge, there are always classes at U of Calgary that teach beginner and advanced search skills. If a group were interested, perhaps we might set up training in the Bow Corridor…again let your Knowledge Brokers know what your needs are.
ON TO SEARCHING…where you can look on your own…
- www.google.com
(from the left-hand column menu, try the Search Guides for basic Google and Advanced Search) - Google Scholar (access via general Google site; click on “about Google Scholar and “Advanced Search”; this site will take you to some good articles, the full text of which you may access through your Knowledge Brokers (Joanne Danyluk-Hall or Sue Langlais) or through management, who have U of Calgary access to many databases with links to full text articles.
- www.canadian-health-network.ca
(English or French) - www.phac-aspc.gc.ca
(Public Health Agency of Canada in English and French) - www.rnao.org
(Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario)
Nursing Best Practice Guidelines
RNAO launched the Nursing Best Practice Guidelines Program in November 1999 with funding from the Government of Ontario.
Clinical Practice Guidelines
The purpose of this multi-year program is to support Ontario Nurses by providing them with Best Practice Guidelines for client care. There are currently 30 English publications, with 8 of them available in French. Clinical Practice Guidelines and a variety of support materials are available for download. - http://www.fhs.mcmaster.ca/rehab/research/research.html
(McMaster University evidence-based site for Occupational Therapists, but good for all disciplines in that it has good information on evidence-based rehabilitation, searching for evidence, appraising the evidence, using evidence in practice, reviews and information. - www.mayocliniccom
- www.guideline.gov
(The National Guideline Clearinghouse™ (NGC) is a comprehensive database of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines and related documents. NGC is an initiative of the AHRQ Homepage - Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NGC was originally created by AHRQ in partnership with the AMA Homepage - American Medical Association and the AHIP Homepage - American Association of Health Plans (now America's Health Insurance Plans [AHIP]). This site is multi-national. - http://www.ebmny.org/
(The Evidence-based Medicine Resource Center). The New York Academy of Medicine in partnership with the Evidence-based Medicine Committee of the American College of Physicians, New York Chapter has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop an Evidence-based Medicine Resource Center. Evidence-based medicine is a methodology for evaluating the validity of research in clinical medicine and applying the results to the care of individual patients. Evidence is gathered through systematic review of the literature, and is critically appraised. The results are then integrated with physician/patient decision making. - AHCPR Clinical Information
Evidence-based practice, clinical practice guidelines, preventive services, technology assessments, outcomes research, Clinician's Handbook of Preventive Services 2nd ed, 1998 (full text) - Bandolier
Evidence-based practice, Bandolier is a journal produced monthly by the Oxford Anglia NHS Region in the UK. It contains bullet points of evidence-based medicine. The editors are Dr Andrew Moore, Dr Henry McQuay and Dr Muir Gray. - Cochrane Collaboration
The Cochrane Collaboration facilitates the creation, review, maintenance and dissemination of systematic overviews of the effects of health care. Systematic review involves the meta-analysis of studies (usually RCT's) meeting set criteria intended to minimize bias. See also the Health Knowledge Network. - DARE - Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness
Systematic reviews are identified from a variety of sources and assessed according to a set of quality criteria. For good quality reviews, detailed structured abstracts describing the methodology, results and conclusions are produced. Comments on the overall quality of reviews and their implications for health care are also included. Search DARE now. - NLM - PubMed
The National Library of Medicine's excellent search tool for accessing the active MEDLINE database. Search by free text, author, journal name, or Medical Subject Heading (MeSH). The power of this tool lies in the 'Related Documents' button/link. When you find one 'good' article, clicking on 'Related Documents' will automatically search for others of a similar nature. Recently links to major medical journals have been added, often giving one access online to full text articles.
If you prefer to build your search step by step, use the Advanced Search. Searching for clinical information related to therapy, diagnosis, etiology, or prognosis -- use the Clinical Query Search - Health Knowledge Network (OVID)
Access to Health Knowledge Network is limited ( registration details).
HKN provides access to MEDLINE, HealthSTAR, CINAHL, CancerLit, and PsychINFO databases using the OVID search engine. - HighWire Press
Excellent Resource!
This link is billed as an Internet Imprint of the Stanford University Libraries. It is a compendium of links to a large selection of medical and scientific journals with button access to content areas within these journals webpages such as the "Current Issue", "Future Content", "Search Articles", "Browse Archive" and "How to Subscribe" - Archives of Internal Medicine, Archives of Dermatology, Archives of Opthalmology, Archives of Neurology, Archives of General Psychiatry, Archives of Otolaryngology, Archives of Surgery, Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine
Features: Abstracts, Full text of selected articles, Table of Contents email service ... - American Family Physician
Features: full text articles designed to meet the needs of Family Physicians. Offers patient datasheets on selected topics prepared by the authors of the articles. - Brain
Features: Tables of Contents and Abstracts freely available to everyone, for issues published since 1996. Full-text articles are available from Volume 120 Issue 1 onwards for current subscribers who have registered for free online access. - BMJ - British Medical Journal
This site features full text BMJ articles, links to PubMed from the article, PDF (Adobe Acrobat) copies of the article, and the ability to comment on articles and to receive a message by email when someone has cited a specific article. - JAMA
Features: Abstracts, Full text of selected articles, link to Contempa 1999 (Updates linking evidence and experience) ... - Journal of the American College of Cardiology
Features: Table of Contents, Abstracts and Full text of selected articles... - Journal of the National Cancer Institute - (JNCI Cancer Spectrum)
Tables of Contents and Abstracts are freely available for issues published since 1997. Full-text access is restricted to current subscribers who have registered for free online access. - Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (Center for Disease Control)
Features: RSS Feeds, Full text and Adobe Acrobat pdf files, and links to MMWR Reports, Summaries of Reports and surveillance, Public Health Resouces, and general information (e.g. Continuing education). Also has a good search service and an A-Z Directory of Diseases - New England Journal of Medicine
Features: Abstracts, Full text available to subscribers ... - Health Canada Online
Provides links to online newsletters, journals and digests. - Martindale Virtual Medical Centre - be sure to scroll down to view a list of the virtual specialty centres
A "Multimedia Specialized Information Resource" currently containing over 15,700 teaching files, over 139,600 Medical Cases & Grand Rounds; 64,200 Teaching Files, 1,455 Courses/Textbooks; 2,155 Teaching Modules,
510 Journals; 4,630 Databases, Atlases & Image Databases & 1,000's of Videos/Movies - MedWeb @ emory university
A classified and sub-classified listing of medical resources - CHR INTERNAL WEB – Health Knowledge Network (HKN)
Go to left hand side of the Internal Web directory.
Click on Admin. Departments.
Click on Library Services.
Click on EBSCO.
The following window pops up; click on the highlighted URL to access the databases.
Note: at the bottom of the box is a link to a tutorial. These tutorials are worth their weight in gold!
EBSCO
Library Services offers access to hundreds of full-text biomedical, psychology, nursing and allied health journals online via the EBSCO host network. Access is automatic from your desktop at any CHR worksite. You can even set up an alerting function that has Table of Contents delivered to your email. Please copy the following link to your computer to create a shortcut from your computer.
To create access to EBSCO host e-journals:
At your desktop, right-click your mouse, select New and then Shortcut. In the command line box that appears type the following:
http://search.epnet.com/login.asp?user=calgary&password=health
Hit Next and give the shortcut a name. Choose Finish.
To learn more about Library Services or to book a training session on any of our information products, please contact your site library. Online tutorials for EBSCO and HKN can be found at www.hkn.ca
There are three databases for all CHR employees; if full text is not available, request the article from rgh.library@calgaryhealthregion.ca or from your Knowledge Brokers.- Medline
MEDLINE provides authoritative medical information on medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and much more. Created by the National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE uses MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) indexing with tree, tree hierarchy, subheadings and explosion capabilities to search citations from over 4,800 current biomedical journals. - Nursing & Allied Health Collection: Comprehensive
Designed for nursing and allied health professionals, students, educators and researchers, this database provides full text for nearly 400 journals covering the areas of nursing, biomedicine, health sciences, consumer health and allied health disciplines. Nearly all full text titles included in Nursing & Allied Health: Comprehensive Edition are indexed in CINAHL.
- Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection
This database provides nearly 575 full text publications, including nearly 550 peer-reviewed titles. Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection covers topics such as emotional and behavioral characteristics, psychiatry & psychology, mental processes, anthropology, and observational and experimental methods. Nearly every full text title included in this database is indexed in PsycINFO. This database is updated daily via EBSCOhost.
- LONG TERM CARE
Go to the CHR Internal Web.
Click on Physician Information.
Click on Continuing Care.
Click on Clinical Pearls – excellent one pagers on topics such as falls, polypharmacy, etc.www.educationresourcecentre.ca
(publicly funded site with extensive resources for Continuing Care a.k.a. Long Term Care issues) - CARE IN THE COMMUNITY
CHR Internal Web – right hand side of the directory, near the top
(several sections with information related to Community Care in the Region) - TRAVEL/TROPICAL MEDICINE
www.cdc.gov/travel
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S.). Always up to date. - KIDS
www.cps.ca
(handouts from the Canadian Pediatric Society for families and healthcare professionals)
Last, but not least, once you have learned how to find information to enhance your practice, what are you going to do with it?
Sue Langlais
Knowledge Broker
Rural Health Bow Corridor
Calgary Health Region
1100 Hospital Place
Canmore, Alberta
T1W 1N2
403-678-7200 - Medline
CHR INTERNAL WEB
Click on Physician Information
Click on Library Services
The following resources are copied directly from our website