Use this guide to get help with APA citations and formatting: APA Citation Guide.
Watch this video to learn how to search OneSearch more effectively.
Use the PICO acronym to help you form a research question. These categories will help you consider all the angles of your topic and come up with keywords to use when searching in a database.
P: Patient, Population, or Problem
I: Intervention (or Exposure)
C: Comparison (or Control)
O: Outcome
Note that you might not have a C, or your C might be the absence of your Intervention. Considering the Comparison will still help you search for your topic.
Evidence-Based Practice or Evidence-Based Medicine is the integration of best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values. (Sackett DL, Straus SE, Richardson WS, et al. Evidence-based medicine: how to practice and teach EBM. 2nd ed. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 2000.)
Research articles found in library resources contain evidence you will use for clinical decision-making. You will find and use many types of sources as you search for evidence.
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Randomized Controlled Trials are studies in which subjects are randomly assigned to two or more groups; one group receives a particular treatment while the other receives an alternative treatment (or placebo). Patients and investigators are "blinded", that is, they do not know which patient has received which treatment. This is done in order to reduce bias.
Cohort Studies are cause-and-effect observational studies in which two or more populations are compared, often over time. These studies are not randomized.
Case Control Studies study a population of patients with a particular condition and compare it with a population that does not have the condition. It looks the exposures that those with the condition might have had that those in the other group did not.
Cross-Sectional Studies look at diseases and other factors at a particular point in time, instead of longitudinally. These are studies are descriptive only, not relational or causal. A particular type of cross-sectional study, called a Prospective, Blind Comparison to a Gold Standard, is a controlled trial that allows a research to compare a new test to the "gold standard" test to determine whether or not the new test will be useful.
Case Studies are usually single-patient cases.
Systematic Reviews are studies in which the authors ask a specific clinical question, perform a comprehensive literature search, eliminate poorly done studies, and attempt to make practice recommendations based on the well-done studies. (Note: systematic reviews are still considered original research because they contain a study design.)
Meta-Analyses are systematic reviews that combine the results of select studies into a single statistical analysis of the results.
Clinical Practice Guidelines are systematically developed statements used to assist practitioners and patients in making healthcare decisions.
(Adapted from Salem State University Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) Research Guide)
MeSH stands for Medical Subject Headings. MeSH is the National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary thesaurus, used for indexing articles for the MEDLINE®/PubMED® database. Each article citation is associated with a set of MeSH terms that describe the content of the article.
MeSH is the language National Library of Medicine indexers use to create tags for citations in MEDLINE and/or PubMed. If you can find the official entry terms instead of using keyword searching, you can focus your search and find better citations.
