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Physical Therapy

Help with your assignments, including finding sources and evidence-based practice.

Search with MeSH Headings

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.


 


MeSH terms are especially helpful when searching in health sciences databases like PubMed, CINAHL, and Cochrane Library. Use the Advanced Search features in these databases to search with MeSH terms and efficiently find all the available literature on a subject.

Evidence-Based Practice: Types of Sources

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. 

 

EBP Pyramid

Pyramid diagram for types of research articles arranged with increasing quality of evidence.

EBM Pyramid and EBM Page Generator, copyright 2006 Trustees of Dartmouth College and Yale University. All Rights Reserved.
Produced by Jan Glover, David Izzo, Karen Odato and Lei Wang.

Types of Sources

Primary Research

Bottom four levels of the EBP Pyramid. Primary research reports original research results. These studies are also called "unfiltered" because they report the results of a single study and do not attempt to synthesize information to answer broader clinical issues.

 

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.  


 

Secondary Research

Top three levels of the EBP pyramid. Secondary sources compile and evaluate original studies. These studies are also called "filtered" because they analyze, synthesize, interpret, and/or evaluate original research studies.

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)