All Guides: APRN Toolkit: Searching

Locating Guidelines

ECRI
Trusted resources including guidelines on patient safety, evidence-based medicine, and technology decision support. Sign up for an account to access content.

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality provides evidence-based recommendations through their guidelines and measures along with the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force including the Clinical Practice Guidelines Archive
PubMed
Search on a topic then apply the following filters under Article Type:
Guideline
Practice Guideline
Consensus Development Conference
Consensus Development Conference NIH

Searching for Evidence Using PICO

One of the steps in the EBP process includes locating the best-available evidence. To help with this step, PICOS was developed. PICOS is a mnemonic tool to help researchers formulate a searchable question. This tool was developed by McMaster University and Health Evidence™

Population/Patient/Problem For which group do you need information?

Intervention What medical event do you need to study the effect of?

Comparison What is the evidence that the intervention produces different results than a different or no intervention?

Outcome What is the effect of the intervention?

Setting/Study Type Where is the research done (e.g., ambulatory setting) or type of study (e.g., RCT)?

Databases and Point-of-Care Tools

CINAHL
Cumulative index to journal literature in nursing and allied health, plus evidence-based care sheets, quick lessons & research instrument tools.

PubMed
Provides access to citations in medical, nursing, dental, and research journals back to 1840.
Nursing and Allied Health Database
Abstracting and indexing for literature in the nursing and related fields, as well as full-text articles and dissertations.

Cochrane Library
Full-text access discontinued due to FY17 budget cuts. Citation only access. Includes the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and other evidence-based databases.

UpToDate
Point-of-Care tool that uses the International GRADE system or Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation for clinical recommendations. Alternate Name: Up To Date

QuickSearch
Find books and articles by searching across most of the library's collections.

Search Tips

What to Put in a Search Box
by D'Arcy Hutchings Last Updated Oct 19, 2023 277 views this year

Citation Tools
by Mike Robinson Last Updated Sep 30, 2022 1265 views this year

Locating Systematic Reviews

Cochrane Library
Includes the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and other evidence-based databases.

Requesting Articles

Come across an article that we do not have access to? Request that the article be sent to you electronically through our Document Delivery service. Login w/ your Blackboard username and password at the link below and fill out the form to register for Document Delivery!

Interlibrary Loan
by Lorelei Sterling Last Updated May 14, 2024 1439 views this year