Health Library News

We’ve developed a new training course just for Keele students . Learn how to find high-level, good quality evidence from the Cochrane Library and the Joanna Briggs Institute database. Book yourself on a session by getting in touch with Mariet or Rachael or book online .

Our new course Cochrane Library and Others will help you to find high-level, good quality evidence such as systematic reviews and evidence summaries. Learn how to search: Cochrane Library Trip database (Turning Research into Practice) CKS (Clinical knowledge Summaries) Book yourself on a session by getting in touch with Mariet or Rachael or book online .

Please be advised that the Wiley Online Library and subsequently The Cochrane Library is currently planned to undergo scheduled maintenance on the weekend of the 7th June 2014 from 10:00am, for approximately 5 hours. The Cochrane Home page will be available but reviews and search functionality will be unavailable.

We have developed a new etutorial that will help you to use the Cochrane Library to find systematic reviews. Find out: What is the Cochrane Library? Where can you access it? How can you run a simple search? How to browse the Cochrane topics

A quirky name but a useful resource. The elves help you to keep up-to-date with the latest evidence-based literature on a number of topics: The Commissioning Elf The Dental Elf The Diabetes Elf The Education Elf The Learning Disabilities Elf The Lifestyle Elf The Mental Elf The Musculoskeletal Elf They highlight the latest reviews, guidelines and policy changes and appraise the studies presented. You can sign-up to receive the latest updates by email or follow their RSS feed or Twitter feed.

Pedro is a physiotherapy evidence database. Here you will find randomised trials, systematic reviews and clinical practice guidelines specific to physiotherapy topics. It is free to search, no login is needed, though you may not get access to all the full-text articles it contains – check our journal collections to see whether we have the full-text.  The database is updated regularly and you can sign-up to an email list so that you can receive the latest updates in your inbox. Using Pedro will help you to focus your literature search on selected, good quality, subject specific material.

If you work in Occupational Therapy you might want to check out the Occupational Therapy Critically Appraised Topics (OT CATs). A CAT is a short summary of the evidence around a particular topic. It usually looks at a number of studies related to the same problem or clinical question in order to try to identify an answer to the query. On this site you can find CATS related to a number of occupational therapy based specific topics. The CAT will include a detailed description of the problem being investigated, the search strategy used, a list of the references identified, a summary of the evidence found as well as a bottom-line conclusion.

Are you looking for systematic Reviews, technology assessments or economic evaluations? You can use the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination to search across a number of different databases: DARE – Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects – for reviews of healthcare interventions and implementations. NHS EED – NHS Economic Evaluation Database – for studies relating to economic evaluation of interventions. HTA – Health Technology Assessments – for information relating to health technology. You can run a quick search from the home page using simple keywords or click the Search menu option for more advanced search options such as combining search terms, using a thesaurus and limiting your search. The CRD record will often include: CRD summary Authors’ objectives and conclusions Search strategy Assessment of how the study was carried out Review Results Potential Implications Link to the original article You may not get access to the full-text of all articles. ...

The previous guidance statement for reporting systematic reviews called the QUOROM Statement (QUality Of Reporting Of Meta-analyses) has recently been updated and renamed the PRISMA Statement (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses). This guidance is now freely available in the latest issue of Annal of Internal Medicine (also to be published in PLOS Medicine (with further explanation and elaboration ), BMJ (with explanation and elaboration ), Journal of Clinical Epidemiology (with explanation and elaboration ), and Open Medicine ). Access the full text article here . For further information on the rapid critical appraisal of systematic reviews, please book on to one of the library run training sessions . Specialist guidance on literature searching is also available on request.