NHS Evidence: Healthcare Databases Advanced Search

Transcription

1 NHS Evidence: Healthcare Databases Advanced Search Healthcare databases are available from Click Journals and Databases at the top left of the screen and then select Healthcare Databases Advanced Search. An NHS Athens account is required. To obtain one, visit and fill in the form, or ask a member of the library staff for help. Without an NHS Athens account only Medline on PubMed is available via simple search. Searching across several databases is possible but this restricts the use of thesaurus terms and limits along with other features for refining the search. The databases cover different subjects, geographic areas and different time periods. Brief details are provided. Click About for more on coverage, publication types indexed and field codes used Searching on one database and repeating it in other appropriate ones is recommended as it provides more options and greater flexibility. You can map your search words to thesaurus terms and apply a range of limits to get a comprehensive focussed search Type your search words in the box. Title and text is the default search option. For better results also use similar or alternative terminology and spellings. Consider: synonyms, alternative phrases, e.g. stroke or cerebrovascular accident. acronyms and full terms e.g. CBT or cognitive behaviour therapy. different word order e.g. student nurses or nursing students; blood glucose monitoring or monitoring of blood glucose. terminology variations e.g. geriatric, elderly, aged or older; differences in UK and US terminology and spelling e.g. physiotherapy or physical therapy, paediatrics or pediatrics. Inter-changeable concepts, e.g. training / education / teaching / learning. Try wildcard searching: typing depress* will find depressed, depressive, depression etc. Operators AND, OR, and parentheses ( ) may be used to focus results. Topic searching Enter the keyword/s for the first concept of your topic. The default search field in the drop down menu is title and abstract. You may change this if needed. Click Search. (A search history is built up as each search term is entered see attached example) Repeat the search but also select the tick box by Map to Thesaurus Terms which are related to the concepts of your keyword search will be displayed (see attached example) Click on the term to view it in the hierarchy of subjects. A scope note may available, giving a definition of the term and how it is used, when it was introduced and possible earlier subjects. Clicking the Subheadings box will provide a list of aspects to enable further focussing: e.g. adverse effects, complications, legislation or therapy. Use with care, applying subheadings initially narrows the options for manipulating your results. Subheadings will vary or may not even be provided for some terms. Select Explode to include all narrower or related terms in the subject hierarchy: e.g. exploding diet therapy will include all the types of diet listed. Select Major descriptor to make the term a main focus of your search. 1

2 Tick the select box and then click search. Combining searches Tick the box to the left of each search to be combined, then either: select OR to widen a search to look for all records where any of the terms occur, or select AND to narrow a search to only those records with all the terms present. Then click on the button. Note: Instead of the back button on your browser use the navigation links at the top of the page (also referred to a bread crumb trail ) to move back within your search. Applying limits More than one limit can be applied at the same time. The terms or the number of the search set to be limited e.g. 7, must be typed in the search box. Limits such as date, publication type, age group, language, gender are available below the search box. Select from these to focus your search. Click on the double arrows to open up a selection of options for a specific limit. Hold the ctrl button down to select more than one option from a drop down menu within a limit. After selecting, click search at the bottom of the page Limits and search options may be cleared, expanded or hidden by clicking on the appropriate link to the right above the search box. Clear the limits if you don t want them applied to the next search. Author Searching Change the field in the drop down menu to the right of the search box to Author. Type the author s name using quotation marks "kendrick k* or "kendrick km". If you do not know the author s initial, use truncation kendrick*. Journal Title Searching Change the field in the drop down menu to the right of the search box to Journal name and type the journal title within quotation marks e.g. The Breast ; The British Journal of Radiology. Note: If the journal title words are part of the article title, try adding and combining a number of different search results to help narrow the final results. Field Code Searching Other fields in database records may also be included in a search by appending the relevant code e.g. page number - "44".pg. institutional affiliation - harvard.in. drug trade name - valium.tn. Note: Fields and codes are database specific and using the same code for more than one database could give misleading results. Consult the About details for an individual database to find permitted fields and codes. De-duplication Note: de-duplication can only be done on sets totalling 500 results or less and should be the final step. You cannot continue to work with a de-duplicated set. Duplicates may be removed within a single database or across multiple databases. Select the check boxes next to the search or searches you wish to de-duplicate and click on The hit list column will indicate: the total results of all the sets; the number of unique results and the number of duplicate results. Click on any number to view them. Viewing Results Click on the blue number in the Hits column of the search history to display your results. The number of results displayed may be changed from 10 (the default) to 20 or 50, using the items per page drop down list, found to the top of the results. Results can also be displayed in a variety of different ways using the other drop down menu, such as author, title or date of publication. 2

3 Tick the Show Abstracts box if you wish to view the abstracts for all results. Alternatively, click on an individual title to view its abstract and more details e.g. subject headings. Note: Not all records have abstracts. Note: If you wish to return to the search page or the current search results, click on the navigation links at the top of the page (known as the breadcrumb trail). Using the Clipboard The clipboard may be used during a search session to temporarily copy selected results from different searches and databases and export them in your chosen format. A maximum of 500 results may be copied to the clipboard. Results in the clipboard must be exported or ed and saved before logging out because the clipboard is cleared at the end of each session. Click the boxes next to the titles required. Ticks carry over to next pages. Click on Copy to Clipboard (found in the top yellow bar as above). Duplicate items are not added. A message appears indicating how many were added and how many were already found. Click on View clipboard to further edit/remove items and then export/save. Note: If you start a different topic search within the same login session, you will need to remove all items from the previous search from the clipboard. Accessing Articles A Full Text link, where available, allows free access to the complete article via a publisher s website. It can then be saved or printed. The full text link will indicate from which publisher the journal is available from and should deep link to that particular title. Note: Sometimes you may need to look for an Athens login prompt and enter your NHS Athens ID again to get the article. If print holdings are indicated, you will be able to go to the library to read or make photocopies, or you may submit an online request for a photocopy from the library website. ing / Exporting / Saving Results Click the box to the left of each reference to be ed, exported or saved. Or, if in the clipboard, use the select all option found at the bottom of the page in the citation manager box. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to the citation manager to /export/save the results. If there is more than one page of results click on the next page number to view the rest. Various citation options are available: Short - Title, Citation, Author, Abstract and Source. Medium - Title, Citation, Author, Language, Abstract, Publication type and Source. Full -Title, Citation, Author, Language, Abstract, Publication type, Subject headings and Source. Export options are HTML, PDF, TEXT, MSWORD, Bibliographic software. Tick the box for Search History if you wish to include it. Use the export results option to print/save the results; or the results to results. After exporting, use the breadcrumb links across the top of the page to return back to the search page. After ing your results, click on continue to return to the search page where your search history may be saved. 3

4 Saving & Rerunning a Saved Search History To save a search history, first select unnecessary steps and click on delete selected searches so that you only have the search steps you want to save displayed. Select those searches that you want to save and click on to save the searches. Create a name for the search strategy that you are saving and click on Save. To display your list of saved results when logging in again, click on the Healthcare Databases Advanced Search page, then click on My saved searches in the top left hand frame and select the search you wish to retrieve from your Saved search histories. At the bottom of the list are two options. Selecting Run Search runs the search in the database it was originally saved against. Selecting Run Search on Current Database will run the search in the database you are currently searching (if you haven t selected a database, it will merely re-run the search on the original database). Note: Searches that contain thesaurus terms are unlikely to bring back meaningful results when run in a database which uses a different thesaurus. The Saved Search Histories list may also be used to delete saved searches or create alerts this list. Creating Alerts To create an Alert, follow the same steps as for saving a search but click on Save and Create Alert instead. On the alert screen which appears, enter the details required: e.g. address for delivery and choose a format type and frequency of delivery from the drop down menus. Click Save Alert to save your alert. You can modify or delete saved alerts by clicking on My saved alerts (found to the top left of the screen) when you log in again. Deleting Searches To delete specific searches, click next to each one then click Delete Selected Searches. To clear all searches and start afresh, tick the box next to the word Database at the top of the Search History table, then click Delete Selected Searches. Changing databases For a thorough systematic search, you need to repeat the search in other relevant databases. Return to the database list, either by using the small Search using different databases above the search box or by clicking on Healthcare Databases Advanced Search in the navigation (breadcrumbs) bar. Select a different database, which will give two options: Re-execute search history. Keeps previous search history but because of differences in thesaurus terms between databases, some results will be 0. The system is sadly not intuitive enough to detect the slight differences in terminology. These terms will have to be remapped in the new database. Combinations may also not be meaningful. Continue. You need to build up your search as before, making use of the new database s thesaurus and limit options. The search history however remains to give you an idea of what you used before. 4

5 If you have problems searching NHS Evidence, please contact the library staff: Tel: For a training session contact: Fran Lamusse - fran.lamusse@porthosp.nhs.uk Darrel Mason darrel.mason@porthosp.nhs.uk Tel: