How to practice EBM:How to practice EBM:Finding the EvidenceFinding the Evidence

Owen Coxall & Nia Wyn Roberts Bodleian Health Care Libraries

Session objectivesSession objectives

Formulate a focused questionTurn a focused question into a

search strategySearch PubMed

Formulate a focused Formulate a focused questionquestion

Patient / Problem / PopulationInterventionComparisonOutcome

Focused questionFocused question

P: Pregnant smokersI: nicotine replacementC: N/AO: cessation

Is nicotine replacement therapy an effective and safe smoking cessation treatment in pregnant women?

Hands-onHands-on

Formulate a focused question◦Use your own question or one of the

examples in your pack◦Record the search terms you’re

using

Run a full search strategyRun a full search strategyWhy bother?Why bother?

Too few resultsToo many resultsIrrelevant resultsSubmitting a funding proposalWriting a guidelineConducting a systematic review

P P I O

Pregnant

Pregnancy

maternal

Smoking

Smoker

Nicotine replacement

Nicotine patch

Nicotine gum

Cessation

Stop

Quit

Combine terms withCombine terms withOROR

smokingtobacco

Smoking OR tobacco – either term can be present

Combine terms withCombine terms withANDAND

Smoking AND cessation – both terms must be present

cessationsmoking

Quick tipsQuick tips

Take a common word stem and look for spelling variations e.g.

◦smok* - will retrieve papers smoking, smoker, smokers… but also smoked salmon

Phrase searching

◦Use double quote marks if you want words to appear next to each other e.g.

“smoking cessation”

Develop a search strategyDevelop a search strategy

1. pregnan* 2. smoking or smoker*3. nicotine replacement OR

nicotine patch*4. cessation OR stop* OR quit*5. 1 AND 2 AND 3 AND 4

Perform a search on PubMedPerform a search on PubMed

Searching tips: PubMedSearching tips: PubMed

Subject searching - use MeSH◦Subject headings added to articles

on Medline◦Search the MeSH Database ◦See MeSH Tutorials for more

informationFinding similar articles – use the

‘Related articles’ link

HelpHelp

Finding the Evidence tutorials:◦ EBM web-site – EBM tools – Finding the Evidence

http://www.cebm.net

PubMed◦ Short online tutorials◦ Quick guides to PubMed – basics, MeSH search and

MyNCBI

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/pubmed.html

Hands-onHands-onPractice turning PICO into search

strategy

Take your focused question:Run further searches on PubMedhttp://www.pubmed.gov