Research Guides: Nursing: Evidence-Based Practice (EBP)

Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) Resources at WKU Libraries

Filtered Information Resources

Filtered resources summarize and appraise evidence from several studies. Include systematic reviews, critically appraised topics, evidence-based guidelines, and point of care references.

Cochrane Library This link opens in a new window
An evidence-based health care database with full text systematic reviews.
DynaMed (EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new window
Dynamed publishes clinically-organized topics on evaluation, differential diagnosis, management, and comprehensive reviews of diseases, conditions, and abnormal findings.

eMedicine
Physician-authored clinical knowledge base. Latest practice guidelines in 62 medical specialties. Professional content undergoes multiple levels of physician peer review. Enhanced access with free registration.
Epistemonikos Evidence database linking systematic reviews, broad syntheses of reviews and primary studies. Includes translated titles and abstracts records to facilitate searching in different languages. Updated continually.
EvidenceAlerts EvidenceAlerts notifies physicians and researchers about newly-published clinical studies. Researchers at the McMaster Health Information Unit find quality studies, reviews, and evidence-based clinical practice guidelines from 127 clinical journals; these are rated by practicing physicians..Free but registration required. Collaboration of DynaMed Plus and McMaster University.

Natural Medicines (formerly Natural Standard) This link opens in a new window
Provides high-quality, evidence-based information about complementary and alternative medicine.

TRIP (Turning Research Into Practice)
TRIP is a clinical search engine to find high-quality research evidence to support practice and/or care. Free and premium versions.

Sources for Primary Literature

Use these tools to search for primary studies. Utilize filters to find study types that provide best evidence; to narrow your results by patient age or gender, date or language.

PubMed (NIH, Open Access) This link opens in a new window
Comprises citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books
CINAHL Full Text (EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new window
Contains full text of scholarly nursing journals since 1981.
Access provided by KYVL.
APA PsycInfo (EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new window
Core database for research in psychology and related fields.
Access provided by KYVL.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Google's scholarly search engine that identifies articles and other scholarly resources across many disciplines.
See our Guide to accessing WKU Library resources through Google Scholar.

Focusing Clinical Questions

PICO or PICOTT: a mnemonic to help formulate clinical question.in EBP.

Often, not all are used in searching for evidence. For example, you often start with P and I.

Patient or Problem: Key characteristics of patients like yours
Intervention, Exposure, Treatment, or Prognostic Factor: What do you want to do?
Comparison: Alternative, if any
Outcome: What do you want to happen? (Okay to just say outcome)
Type of Question: Therapy/Diagnosis/Harm/Prevention
Type of Study: Systematic review, RCT, cohort study, case control

PICO Clinical Question Worksheet

Types of Question and Study design:

Clinical Examination: Prospective, blind comparison to Gold Standard
Diagnostic Testing: Prospective, blind comparison to Gold Standard
Prognosis: Cohort Study>Case Control>Case Series
Therapy: RCT
Etiology/Harm: RCT>Cohort Study>Case Control>Case Series
Prevention: RCT>Cohort Study>Case Control>Case Series
Cost: Economic Analysis

EBP Tutorial
Intro from Duke University.
Using PubMed in Evidence-Based Practice (NLM)