1. Where’s the Evidence? High quality authoritative evidence and best practice Health, social care and public health evidence provided by NICE

2. Finding the evidence -Why search?

3. Information overload Medical literature is: expanding at a rate of more than 7% per year doubling approximately, every 10-15 years

4. Clinical search engines and databases Use Evidence Search (www.evidence.nhs.uk) for literature searching. Free open access to health and social care evidence and A-Z topics, including Public Health topics from NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence)www.evidence.nhs.uk

5. Getting an Athens password You can do this a)from the Evidence Search page at www.evidence.nhs.ukwww.evidence.nhs.uk b)from the Open Athens website at https://openathens.nice.orghttps://openathens.nice.org Athens is an access management system. All PHE and NHS staff are eligible to obtain a password. Check additional eligibility at http://www.evidence.nhs.uk/about-evidence- services/journals-and-databases/openathens/eligibility-criteria-for-nhs- purchased-content Get an Athens password which will enable you, in addition to the basic Evidence Search, to use Healthcare Databases purchased by NICE on behalf of the NHS and allied organisations PLUS access many journals (some full-text) online. You will also be able to save searches for an indefinite period and create alerts if you use the advance search option (HDAS)

6. Doing a literature search 1.Evidence search without Athens login. Does not search journal articles 2.Simple search using NICE healthcare databases. (Medline from PubMed only) 3.Advanced search using NICE healthcare databases (HDAS) requires Athens login 4.Can choose from 8 databases or search across databases 5.Additional advantages: Can apply limits to narrow down search Can save searches and create alerts Can combine searches Databases come with a thesaurus to check for alternative search terms

7. Searching tips 1.Create a searchable question 2.Identify the keywords and alternative terms. Clinical librarians use the PICO format (Patient/Population/Problem; Intervention; Comparison; Outcome) format to focus on the relevant parts of the question 3.Check thesaurus in database for search terms or use free text terms 4.Search for one term at a time and combine using Boolean Terms (AND/OR/NOT) 5.Search more than one database 6.Limit by language, publication type and year

8. Create a searchable question Does sunbed use in young adults increase the risk of developing melanoma ?

9. Step 5: Turn the keywords into a PICO Patient/Population/ProblemIntervention/ExposureOutcome Young adultsSunbeds Indoor tanning Solariums UV tanning devices Artificial ultraviolet Melanoma Malignant melanoma Skin cancer Neoplasms Comparison No exposure to indoor tanning before age 25

10. Language and terminology: European & international terms: ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Narrower & broader terms: Crohn’s Disease/Inflammatory Bowel Disease British/American spelling: behaviour/behavior oestrogen/estrogen diarrhoea/diarrhea paediatrics/pediatrics Issues with searching

11. 1. Truncation – Use an asterisk * or a dollar sign $ – For example, nurs* or nurs$ will look for nurse, nurses or nursing, while nurs$2 will look for nurse or nurses only. 2. Wildcards –Use a question mark ? to replace a letter, hyphen or space –For example, behavio?r or diarrh?ea or p?ediatrics will retrieve British and American English spellings (behaviour/behavior or diarrhoea/diarrhea paediatrics/pediatrics) 3. Thesaurus (aka Subject Headings, MeSH) –Subject headings overcome the problem of variations in terminology and spelling. For example, European & international terms (ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) and Narrower & broader terms (Crohn’s Disease/Inflammatory Bowel Disease). Three ways to overcome issues

12. Additional information 1.Look out for current awareness services and RSS feeds which may be appropriate for your field of work. The Public Health (primary care) Library at South Plaza, which is managed currently by North Bristol NHS Trust, provides a very good web-based current awareness service on many topics. It also provides a table-of-contents (TOC) service for major journals eg BMJ and The Lancet. See the wordpress site at http://primarycarelibrary.wordpress.com/current-awareness/ http://primarycarelibrary.wordpress.com/current-awareness/ 2.TRIP Database, the Internet's leading resources for Evidence-Based Medicine. Allowing users to rapidly identify the highest quality clinical evidence for clinical practice. Limited to freely-available information. http://www.tripdatabase.com/ http://www.tripdatabase.com/ 3.Cochrane Library(systematic reviews and RCTs) is available to everyone, via NHS Evidence or at http://www.thecochranelibrary.com/view/0/index.html http://www.thecochranelibrary.com/view/0/index.html 4.Useful page for links to what is available on NHS Evidence at http://www.evidence.nhs.uk/about-evidence- services/journals-and-databaseshttp://www.evidence.nhs.uk/about-evidence- services/journals-and-databases Information provided by Jean Newman, Librarian, PHE South West KIT: Jean.Newman@phe.gov.ukJean.Newman@phe.gov.uk Additional slides courtesy of Caroline de Brun, Independent Medical Librarian and author ‘Searching skills toolkit finding the evidence’. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK. doi: 10.1002/9781444303599.fmatter