After this course you will be able to: Finding Evidence After this course you will be able to: Log on to the NICE Evidence databases Choose the appropriate databases for your search Do a simple subject search Do a simple title/abstract search Refine a search on Google Scholar Do a basic search on the Trip database

The NICE Evidence Search databases You can search the NICE Evidence Search databases at https://www.evidence.nhs.uk/ From the home page click on the Journals and databases link

Starting your search On the next screen – under Healthcare databases advanced search (HDAS) - click on the blue Begin a search button

Logging in with your Athens account To get the best search results you’ll need to log in with your Athens account (ask us if you haven’t already got one) You can do this by clicking on the Login for all databases link below the search box

Choosing a database You can search any of eight different databases. It’s best NOT to search them all at the same time and it’s also best to search PubMed at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ rather than from here. The databases are: AMED – allied professions and complementary medicine BNI – British Nursing Index. Nursing literature with a UK emphasis CINAHL – Nursing literature. Larger than BNI with more US literature EMBASE – life sciences and medicine. More pharmacology and a European emphasis HBE – Health Business Elite Management and leadership HMIC – Department of Health policies and publications and the King’s Fund library – how healthcare is organised Medline – life sciences and medicine with a US emphasis. Very similar to PubMed PsycINFO – Psychiatry, psychology and mental health. Also good for organisational psychology

Starting your search Start your search by selecting which database you want to search, typing your search in and clicking on either Search or Thesaurus 3. Select Search or Thesaurus here 1. Choose your database here 2. Type your search in here

Using Search The automatic option Searches through the abstracts and titles of articles Finds exactly what you type e.g. if you type COPD this won’t find occurrences of Chronic Obsstructive Pulmonary Disease Search for phrases using quotation marks e.g. “pressure ulcer.” Use adj for words near each other e.g. head adj2 injury Use truncation e.g. depress* will find depression, depressed, depressive etc

Using Thesaurus Searches through subject terms added to articles by authors and indexers Covers all the variations of a particular term e.g. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease will find COPD Finds fewer – but more relevant - articles

Using Thesaurus - II To do a Thesaurus search type your search into the search box and click on the Thesaurus button

Using Thesaurus - III Click on COPD below the search box and you can see the terms the database thinks are a good match for this 1. COPD is part of a larger ‘family’ of Lung Diseases, Obstructive 2. “Pulmonary Diseases, Chronic Obstructive” is the term used in the index 3. The COPD “family” includes Bronchitis, Chronic and Pulmonary Emphysema 4. Alternative terms for COPD – these get included in your search

Using Thesaurus - IV Using the tick boxes on the left-hand side of the screen you can select the topics you want to look for Click on Select to choose your topic Click on Explode to include all subdivisions e.g. Lung Diseases > TB, Bronchitis, Asthma etc Click on Major to only find articles where this is the MAIN topic

Using Thesaurus - V Once you’ve made your selections click on Search Now at the top of the screen to carry out your search

Combining searches - I COPD Smok* OR Tobacco It’s always a good idea to search each part of your search separately and then combine them together at the end. You can do this using AND or OR Use OR to combine two alternatives in one search Use AND to get articles which cover BOTH topics e.g. Smok* OR Tobacco AND COPD Smok* OR Tobacco COPD AND

Combining searches - II Each part of your search makes a separate line on your search strategy. You can combine them together using the tick boxes on the left and the AND/OR combine buttons at the foot of the strategy table 2. Select AND or OR here 1. Use the tick boxes to select which searches to combine 3. Click on Combine to run your search

Downloading search results - I You can download your search results as a PDF or MSWord file or email them to yourself Use the tick boxes next to the article titles for the references you want to download or the All on this page tick box When you’ve made your selection click on the Add 1 (or however many references you’ve chosen) to saved button

2. Click on Export Options Downloading your search results - II Your Saved Results should appear at the top of your search strategy 2. Click on Export Options 1. Select Saved Results

Downloading your search results - III Choose level of detail here – Medium will give you the abstract You can either save a PDF or MSWord file or email the results to yourself Choose whether to include your search strategy here Choose format – MSWord, PDF etc – of the download here

Getting better results from Google Scholar Did you know you can limit your results on Google Scholar by either date or to NHS or UK research? 2. By adding :nhs.uk, :ac.uk or just :uk after your search you can limit your results to NHS resources, British universities or things published in the UK respectively 1. You can use the time links on the left-hand side of the screen to only get the most recent results

The TRIP database - I Find it at https://www.tripdatabase.com/ Stands for Turning Research into Practice Aims to concentrate more on clinically-relevant information Lots of links back to full text Results are ranked according to quality

The TRIP database - II Most of the articles link to full text On the right-hand side of the screen the results are ranked in order of quality. They’re colour-coded so you can tell different types of research apart