Module 2.1 Introduction to finding the best evidence

Once you have developed a focussed clinical question, you need to be able to quickly and effectively search for the best evidence, within the most suitable resource.

Key steps and guidelines:

• Converting your clinical question into a search strategy
• Understanding and using the Hierarchy of Evidence to find information
• Effective and efficient searching
• Troubleshooting, limiting and expanding your search.

Your aim is to retrieve the highest level of evidence, which is relevant to your question as efficiently as possible. Many of the clinical information resources and medical databases, enable you to perform very sophisticated searches using specialised limits and filters. To find the best answers in the shortest time, you will often need to make use of the full functionality that the databases offer.

The University of Western Australia Library subscribes to many clinical information resources and medical databases

Several of these resources are available as an App for mobile devices with a UWA institutional subscription.