1. 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

2. The NICE Evidence Search databases
You can search the NICE Evidence Search databases at
From the home page click on the Journals and databases link

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

4. 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

5. 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 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

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

10. 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

11. 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

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

13. 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

14. 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

15. Downloading search results - I
You can download your search results as a PDF or MSWord file or 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

16. 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

17. 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 the results to yourself
Choose whether to include your search strategy here
Choose format – MSWord, PDF etc – of the download here

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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