On Saturday, October 2nd, 2004, the University of British Columbia (UBC)-Continuing Studies and the Physiotherapy Association of British Columbia (PABC) sponsored a course for rehabilitation professionals. The focus of the course was “Accessing and Using Research in Everyday Practice”.  One of the sessions was taught by Alison Hoens, a clinical Assistant Professor at UBC in the Physiotherapy department.

Alison spent an hour and a half educating the group on what quantitative analysis of research is, and on her process of searching for articles.  Alison uses five databases in the following order:

Research Steps:

1.       1) PubMed - Search PubMed and determine the MeSH terms.

2.       2) MeSH-H terms - Use MeSH terms in the other databases.

3.       3) Databases to Search - Cochrane Library, PEDro, DARE, SUMSearch

PubMed

PubMed, a service of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), allows you access to MEDLINE.  MEDLINE is the NLM's premier bibliographic database covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the American health care and the pre-clinical sciences. MEDLINE contains bibliographic citations and author abstracts from more than 4,800 biomedical journals published in the United States and 70 other countries. The database contains over 12 million citations dating back to the mid-1960's. Coverage is worldwide, but most records are from English-language sources, or have English abstracts.

PubMed provides access to bibliographic information that includes MEDLINE, OLDMEDLINE, the out-of-scope citations (e.g., articles on plate tectonics or astrophysics), citations that precede the date that a journal was selected for MEDLINE indexing, and some additional life science journals that submit full text to PubMedCentral.

At the bottom of a PubMed abstract you will see MeSH words.  MeSH is the National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary, used for indexing articles for MEDLINE/PubMed. MeSH terminology provides a consistent way to retrieve information that may use different terminology for the same concepts.

Access - PubMed abstracts are free.  A few of the full text articles are free, and most are downloadable from the publisher for a fee.

Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi

The Cochrane Library

The Cochrane Library reviews are based on the best available information about healthcare interventions. They explore the evidence for and against the effectiveness and appropriateness of treatments (medications, surgery, education, etc) in specific circumstances.

The complete reviews are published by The Cochrane Library, which is available by subscription, either on CDROM or via the Internet. The Cochrane Library is written by The Cochrane Collaboration, an international, non-profit and independent organization, dedicated to making up-to-date, accurate information about the effects of healthcare readily available worldwide. The Cochrane Collaboration was founded in 1993 and named for the British epidemiologist, Archie Cochrane.

Access - The abstracts are free, and full reviews can be ordered for a small fee.

Link - www.cochrane.org

PEDro

PEDro is the Physiotherapy Evidence Database.  It provides bibliographic details and abstracts of randomized controlled trials, and systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials in physiotherapy.  This database also rates the quality of each article, and indicates those that are valid and interpretable and those that are not.

Access - Free access to all databases, and the abstracts are free.  With some of the results, a  link is provided to full text reviews either for free or for a small fee.

Link – www.pedro.fhs.usyd.edu.au

DARE

DARE is the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects. DARE was created in 1994 to provide research-based information about the effects of interventions used in health and social care. DARE contains summaries of systematic reviews which have met strict quality criteria. Each summary provides a critical commentary on the quality of the review. The database covers a broad range of health and social care topics and can be used for answering questions about the effects of interventions, as well as for developing guidelines and policy making.

Access – Access to the database is free. 

Link - http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd/darehp.htm

SUMSearch

SUMSearch is a database that combines meta-searching (searches multiple internet sites) and contingency searching (if there are too many hits, the search is narrowed).  SUMSearch searches Merck Manual, Medline, AHCPR (National Guideline Clearinghouse from the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research), and DARE for original research.

Access – Free access to databases and the abstracts are free.

Link – http://sumsearch.uthscsa.edu/

Next time you have a topic you need to find information on, try Allison’s approach.  First try PubMed and get the MeSH terms.  After getting the MeSh-H terms, enter them into the following databases: The Cochrane Library, PEDro, DARE and SUMSearch, to find quality information quickly.

Article written by Rick Kaselj - rkaselj@healingthroughmovement.com

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