A Meta-analysis takes a systematic review one step further by combining all the results using accepted statistical methodology.
Systematic Reviews usually focuses on a specific clinical question and conducts an extensive literature search to identify studies with sound methodology. The studies are reviewed, assessed, and the results summarized according to the predetermined criteria of the review question.
Randomized, controlled clinical trials. A prospective, analytical, experimental study using primary data generated in the clinical environment. Individuals similar at the beginning are randomly allocated to two or more groups (treatment and control) and the outcomes of the groups are compared after sufficient follow-up time.
A study that shows the efficacy of a diagnostic test is called a prospective, blind comparison to a gold standard study. This is a controlled trial that looks at patients with varying degrees of an illness and administers both diagnostic tests -- the test under investigation and the "gold standard" test -- to all of the patients in the study.
Cohort studies identify a large population who already has a specific exposure or treatment, follows them over time (prospective), and compares outcomes with another group that has not been affected by the exposure or treatment being studied. Cohort studies are observational and not as reliable as randomized controlled studies, since the two groups may differ in ways other than in the variable under study.
Case control studies are studies in which patients who already have a specific condition or outcome are compared with people who do not. Researchers look back in time (retrospective) to identify possible exposures. They often rely on medical records and patient recall for data collection. These types of studies are often less reliable than randomized controlled trials and cohort studies because showing a statistical relationship does not mean than one factor necessarily caused the other.
Case series and Case reports consist of collections of reports on the treatment of individual patients or a report on a single patient. Because they are reports of cases and use no control groups with which to compare outcomes, they have no statistical validity.
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Index, abstracts, and full text covering complementary, holistic and integrated approaches to health care and wellness.
Index and abstracts to international books and meeting in biological and medical research.
Index, abstracts, and full text of the literature of nursing and allied health.
Although Courtright Memorial Library no longer subscribes to this resource, the Cochrane Library does make a number of resources freely available. This is a collection of seven databases focused on providing high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making.
Consumer Health Complete is a comprehensive resource for consumer-oriented health content. It is designed to support patients' information needs and foster an overall understanding of health-related topics. Consumer Health Complete provides content covering all areas of health and wellness from mainstream medicine to the many perspectives of complementary, holistic and integrated medicine. In addition, Consumer Health Complete includes the Clinical Reference System and the Lexi-PAL Drug Guide, which provides access to up-to-date, concise and clinically relevant drug monographs. The database is updated on a weekly basis.
This collection offers full-text coverage of information relevant to many areas that are integral to the food industry. This database offers cover-to-cover full-text coverage for more than 1,400 publications, including journals, monographs, magazines, and trade publications, all directly dealing with food industry-related issues. More than 1,000 key food industry and market reports are available.
Information on many health topics including the medical sciences, food sciences and nutrition, childcare, sports medicine and general health.
Index, abstracts, and full text focusing on many medical disciplines, particularly nursing and allied health.
A collection of unique and compelling films and documentaries. Films range from documentaries, indie, foreign films, must-see classics, and feature films.
A comprehensive index for medical journals and provides full text for more than 1,370 journals. MEDLINE is the official library version of PUBMED.
Bringing together 2 million digitized entries across Oxford University Press’s Dictionaries, Companions and Encyclopedias, Oxford Reference is the premier online reference product, spanning 25 different subject areas.
This database offers reliable, comprehensive coverage of the fields of nursing and allied health including journals, video, dissertations, reference books and more.
Index, abstracts, and full text covering topics such as emotional and behavioral characteristics, psychiatry and psychology, mental processes, anthropology, and observational and experimental methods.
Provides abstracts and citations to the scholarly literature in the psychological, social, behavioral, and health sciences. The database includes material of relevance to psychologists and professionals in related fields such as psychiatry, management, business, education, social science, neuroscience, law, medicine, and social work.
PubMed is a free search engine accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics.
Learn about your prescription drugs and over-the-counter medicines. Includes side effects, dosage, special precautions, and more.
Synonyms can very helpful throughout your investigative and research process. Using synonyms with boolean operators can potentially expand your search. Databases with subject headings or controlled vocabularies like MeSH in PubMed often have a thesaurus that can match you with appropriate terms.
Elderly | Geriatrics, Aged |
Heart Attack | Myocardial Infarction |
Boolean operators allow you to manipulate your search.
Use AND to narrow your search
eg. elderly AND diabetes
Use OR to broaden your search
eg. myocardial infarction OR heart attack
Use NOT to exclude terms from your search
eg. children NOT infants
Use quotation marks to search for phrases. When you surround your search terms with quotation marks, you are telling the database that the words must appear as an exact phrase. Searching for the terms with no quotation marks gives us results that contain synonyms and MeSH terms.
PICOTT is a mnemonic used to describe elements of a good clinical foreground question to be directly relevant to the patient or problem at hand. The PICOTT model is used in evidence-based practice to assist in formulation of the search strategy by identifying the key concepts that need to be in the article that can answer the question..
PICO or PICOTT:
PATIENT OR PROBLEM
How would you describe a group of patients similar to yours? What are the most important characteristics of the patient?
INTERVENTION, EXPOSURE, PROGNOSTIC FACTOR
What main intervention are you considering? What do you want to do with this patient?
COMPARISON
What is the main alternative being considered, if any?
OUTCOME
What are you trying to accomplish, measure, improve or affect?
Type of Question
Therapy / Diagnosis / Harm / Prognosis / Prevention
Type of Study
Systematic review / RCT / cohort study / case control
Search Strategy
1) Develop 'answerable question' using PICOT
2) Search one term or concept at a time
3) OR together synonyms
4) AND for joining concepts together
5) Consider limits for publication types, age, human, and evidence-based
6) Critically appraise articles retrieved
7) Revise search if appropriate