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How to get the most from the medical literature: Searching the medical literature effectively
Author(s) -
WEBSTER ANGELA C,
CROSS NICHOLAS B,
MITCHELL RUTH,
CRAIG JONATHAN C
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
nephrology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.752
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1440-1797
pISSN - 1320-5358
DOI - 10.1111/j.1440-1797.2009.01263.x
Subject(s) - medicine , focus (optics) , clinical practice , medical literature , medline , information retrieval , data science , management science , computer science , family medicine , pathology , physics , political science , law , optics , economics
Different clinical questions are best answered using different study designs. This paper describes the best methods for finding relevant studies for well‐framed clinical questions. We focus on which database is best to search to answer your question, describe the structure of effective search strategies and explore ways to develop appropriate search terms. We illustrate these with sensitive and specific search strategies to answer different clinical questions arising from a hypothetical clinical scenario typical of a nephrologist's everyday practice.