Healthcare Information and Literature Searching

Transcription

1 Healthcare Information and Literature Searching To book your place on the course contact the library team: E: T:

2 Planning your search Five steps to a successful search strategy: 1. Define a clear and answerable question 2. Think about the key concepts, thinking of alternatives and synonyms 3. Choose the appropriate databases for the search 4. Search using the thesaurus, then combine and limit 5. Review and revise to broaden or narrow your search, as necessary Defining your question Before starting your literature search you should first decide exactly what you want to search for and from what perspective. A useful method of doing this uses the acronym PICO 1 : Patient, problem or population Intervention or exposure Comparison Outcomes Age, sex, race, condition or disease, care setting, etc Type of intervention or exposure e.g. test, therapy or clinical procedure, harmful substance, etc Alternative interventions, if applicable Measurement, result, effect This will allow you to form your search strategy and give you keywords. For example: Is there a link between drinking alcohol and heart attacks in middle aged adults? Choosing a database Next decide which database will give you the most appropriate information to answer your specific search question: AMED (physiotherapy, OT, rehabilitation & complementary medicine) British Nursing Index (small database of popular British nursing journals) CINAHL (nursing and allied health, including recent US research) EMBASE (European database of biomedical and pharmacological literature) Health Business Elite (Full-text content from 480 journals): healthcare administration and non-clinical aspects of health care institution management HMIC (Health management information consortium): a compilation of DH-Data (health administration & toxicology) and Kings Fund (health improvement & management) Medline (the largest database, covers clinical, medical and nursing literature) PsycINFO (psychology, psychiatry and related disciplines) 1 PICO can be a helpful tool, but should not dictate your search. 2

3 Accessing the databases Where to go To access the databases: Click on Healthcare databases to expand the list and click on the hyperlinked healthcare databases to access the databases. Enter your NHS Open Athens Username and Password to access the databases. 3

4 Conducting a subject search You can carry out a search on all the databases at the same time but it is more effective to search them one by one and use the advanced search. To carry out an advanced search select the relevant database, either click on the title or place a tick in the box and click Search

5 Once you have selected your database, you will get a screen that looks like the screen shot below Look out for the thesaurus mapping tick box. Identifying search terms Break down your search question into individual concepts, each of which will be searched separately for example, to search for articles about the possible relationship between alcohol and heart attack in middle age, your search terms will be: Heart attack Alcohol drinking Middle age Thesaurus mapping When each article is indexed, it is labeled with a series of subject headings from the database s thesaurus. When you search using a database s thesaurus you will only retrieve articles that are about that subject, not those which merely mention the word. You will also be using the same terminology as the people indexing the articles. This means that you will retrieve more relevant results. The list of results without using the thesaurus will appear automatically. This helps you to check the spelling and get an idea of the number of results you might get. Type in the first of your keywords, tick the thesaurus mapping box and click the Search button. 5

6 The database will generate a list of possible index terms, from which you will need to pick the one closest to your search term. If you are not sure, use the scope next to the list of terms on offer, for more information about their meaning (N.B. please note although a link to the scope is available from all databases, in some cases no additional information is available) Select exploded if you want your term to be a general subject of the article, major descriptor if it is the major subject of the article, or subheadings to be very specific and break the subject down further. Select explode if you want your term to be a general subject of the article, major descriptor if it is the major subject of the article, or subheadings to be very specific and break the subject down further. Selecting subheadings enables you to refine the search term more. Your results page after selecting the term of your choice is at the top of the screen and will look like this: Continue the same process with your next search concept/term. 6

7 Boolean logic Boolean logic is a tool for combining different sets of information, so as to produce subsets. The most commonly used are AND and OR. AND finds the articles indexed with both terms OR finds articles indexed with either term NOT finds articles indexed with one of the terms Key: A = Aids B = HIV 2 Aids AND HIV Aids OR HIV Aids NOT HIV Combining a search Once all concepts have been searched separately, combine your sets by placing a tick in the relevant boxes, choose AND or OR and click Combine selected searches, using Boolean logic. To conduct a NOT search type in search box, e.g. 1 NOT 2 Place a tick in the relevant boxes Choose either AND or OR You will then have a result containing articles which cover all the subjects in the sets you have combined, e.g. Search 3: (1 AND 2) Hits: Image from [cited 2008 June 13] 7

8 Limiting a search To apply relevant limits to your search results, select limits from the options displayed. The choice of Limits will differ in individual databases. You can click on the Apply limits link with the funnel icon next to the search you want to limit and the limits options will appear below Please click on the different tabs to choose the limits you want to apply and click the Search button when you finished. Use the arrows on the right or scroll bar to drop down each Limit section and choose from the options available. To select multiple options from one list of Limit options, hold down the CTRL key whilst click on the appropriate limits You can apply more than one limit 8

9 For our example we have used the Age Group limit middle age and the Date Limit for articles published from 2007 to 2013 Displaying and downloading your results Click on the number of Hits to access the list of articles Your articles can be displayed in sets of 10, 20 and 50, giving you the article title, journal title, date of publication and author. It is often faster to view results if you choose to display the results list in sets of 50. It is also advisable to select Show Abstracts by placing a tick in the tick box as this allows you to view the journal abstract in the results list and sort the articles by Publication Date to see the most recent on the top. Some articles have a link through to another database, where they are available in full text. 9

10 The Clipboard You can select articles to add to your Clipboard by placing a tick in the box next to the record number. Items can be added to the clipboard during your search and will remain accessible whether you continue to search in the current database or choose to search one of the other databases available. The access to the clipboard is at the bottom of the page. Items placed on the clipboard need to be downloaded at the end of the session if needed as they will not be available the next time you log-in Click here to view articles added to the clipboard Click on this link to add items to the clipboard You can export (print or save) and/or you results list using the grid located at the bottom, of the page. Choose Medium format and either Export Results or Results The display format medium will give you the article citation (needed by the Library to order the full text) plus the abstract (for your information) and full-text links where available. To print results or export to reference software, e.g. EndNote click on Export Results. To them click on Results. To save them with the search strategy place a tick in the Include Search History box 10

11 Navigating the Healthcare Databases Advanced Search To navigate the Healthcare databases use the links located towards the top of the page, e.g. to return to the search page click Search and Limits. Re-execute Search History You can re-run your search history in another database Choose which database you would like to re-execute the search in (remember that not all the databases use the same thesaurus, therefore some thesaurus searches will retrieved 0 results. If this occurs re-enter your keyword and find the appropriate Subject Term by Mapping to the Thesaurus of the database in which you are searching. Click to choose the database in which to rerun your search Saving Searches You can save searches to be re-run at a later date. Edit your search history using Delete selected searches, please be aware that a saved search will be re-run exactly as saved, and deleted elements can not be retrieved. Make sure that you leave all parts of the required search. (i.e. do not delete Search number 1 if you later searched 1 AND 2) 11

12 Type a name for your search in the search name box. Click Save To retrieve and re-run a saved search select Saved Searches from the box in the left hand column. You can also modify and delete existing saved searches and alerts from this menu. Saved Searches A List of your saved searches will then be displayed. Select the one you wish to re-run and Click Run search It is also possible to save an existing search as an Alert by clicking on Create Alert Creating Alerts To create an Alert, follow the same steps as described above, but when you save your search click Save and Create Alert. 12

13 In the Alert form enter an address that you would like your alert to be delivered to. Choose a document type and frequency of delivery from the drop down menus. Click Save Alert Recover Searches The Healthcare Databases search interface automatically saves your searches for a limited period of time. This is very useful for occasions where the server might have timed out or similar problems because it allows you to recover all or part of your search 13