Key Clinical Resources

Researcher’s Toolkit: Essential Clinical Resources and Search Techniques

I: Getting Started…

LaneConnex:  LaneConnex is the library’s main portal to biomedical resources: http://lane.stanford.edu  Use the LaneConnex search option to quickly locate journals and books

Clinical Portal:  Lists key resources AND provides a meta-search option  Searches are run against a core set of high-impact clinical resources

Disease Info:  Dorlands: The best medical dictionary. Available via the Desk Reference link on Lane’s homepage, Dorland’s is just one component of a larger medical resource called, “Merck Source”  UpToDate: Highly-popular, aggressively updated general medical “e-textbook”  eMedicine: Similar in concept to UpToDate, and particularly strong in pediatrics  Harrisons and other specialty eBooks (ebooks are searched when you use “Clinical” search  DxPlain: decision support tool: you add signs/symptoms and DxPlain lists possible diagnoses  Gideon: Similar to DxPlain, with emphasis on infectious disease. Lots of epidemiology info

Lab Test Info:  Micromedex Lab Advisor: lots of others, but Micromedex Lab Advisor is particularly easy-to-use Drug Info: Lane Medical Library and Knowledge Management Center 1 Researcher’s Toolkit: Clinical Resources  LPCH-SHC CRL (Clinical Reference Library): includes the SHC and LPCH formularies  Micromedex: includes basic drug info, drug/drug interactions, pill ID, US names for foreign drugs, toxicology data, and much more  SHC and LPCH Antiobiograms: Antibiotic susceptibility of bacteria & yeast

Images (available via the “Learning and Images Tab” within the Clinical Portal)  AnatomyTV: three-dimensional anatomy – very easy to copy and paste anatomical images  ImagesMD: great source of images with attribution. Includes illustrations, decision trees, flow charts, ECGs, etc. Images may be emailed as PwrPt slides (register first on ImagesMD homepage)

Search Engines  Effective Google Search Tips: 1) to search a phrase, enclose terms in quotes, e.g., “prevalence of HIV in Kenya” 2) to use Google to search a website, use the “site” command, e.g., glucowatch approval site:fda.gov 3) to search for terms in the title of a webpage, use Advanced Search and change anywhere in page to in the title of the page  Google Scholar: Results are theoretically more “scholarly” than Google. Results also include a crude estimate of the number of times the item was cited

PDA Resources (see “PDA Tools” from Lane’s homepage)  Epocrates and MicroMedex

Information Management  EndNote, EndNote Web, RefWorks,

II: Other Websites, Databases and Search Strategies

Databases:  The following resources are available via our Databases page, or via the “All Stanford Databases” link on the Databases page  Health Policy: Pubmed, ABI/Inform, PolicyFile, Social Sciences Citation Index  Bioengineering: PubMed, BIOSIS, Engineering Index, Inspec  Social or Psych: Sociology Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, PubMed, PsychInfo  Health Education: ERIC, Social Sciences Citation Index, PubMed  Clinical Medicine: Many! PubMed, Cochrane (two databases, one containing systematic reviews, the other clinical trials), ClinicalTrials.gov, etc.

Information Management  Use EndNote to store the citations from any of the databases listed above

III: Four PubMed Search Strategies: Easy to Advanced!

Strategy 1: Clinical metasearch. Uset the Clinical Portal search box: amoxicillin-clavulanate azithromycin acute otitis media children Use the PubMed Best Evidence section to select systematic reviews, references from “core” clinical journals, or everything. Great when it works, otherwise, you’ll need a different strategy.

Strategy 2: PubMed Clinical Queries. Enter amoxicillin-clavulanate azithromycin acute otitis media children into the search box, select therapy as the category, narrow to limit the scope of the search, and click Go. Lane Medical Library and Knowledge Management Center 2 Researcher’s Toolkit: Clinical Resources Clinical Queries adds terms to your search that tend to retrieve clinical trials. A great strategy when there are clinical trials, otherwise, you’ll probably need to try something else.

Strategy 3: Title Search. A great strategy for any database. Useful in PubMed particularly when Strategy 1 and 2 fail. Keep it simple! When you glance at the title of an article, what terms would tell you immediately that the citation is relevant to your clinical question? If you don’t retrieve anything, broaden your search by adding synonyms and truncation.

Connect directly to PubMed. Let’s use the asterisk “*” to truncate the word children. A search of child* will retrieve child, children, etc. Enter your search terms and separate them with the boolean operator AND in upper-case: amoxicillin-clavulanate AND azithromycin AND acute otitis media AND child* Any terms you not separate with AND, PubMed may try to search as phrases.

Click the Limits tab, scroll to the bottom of the Limits page and choose Title from the Default Tag pull-down menu and click Go. Find a relevant result, and click on the author’s names to view the citation. Click Related Articles to quickly and easily locate similar articles.

Strategy 4: Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) Locate a relevant citation using Strategies 1, 2 or 3. Make sure it’s labeled [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE], otherwise it won’t contain MeSH terms. Click on the author’s names, then change Display from AbstractPlus to Citation. Click on a relevant MeSh term, and then click MeSH to add the term to the MeSH Database

Click in the checkbox next to the MeSH term. From the Send To pull-down menu, select Search Box with AND

Lane Medical Library and Knowledge Management Center 3 Researcher’s Toolkit: Clinical Resources Use the Back button in your web browser to back up to the citation and click on other MeSH terms. After you’ve finished adding the terms, click on Search PubMed

Now, we’ll use Limits to restrict our search to language, English. We’ll also limit to various types of articles, Clinical Trial, Meta-Analysis, Randomized Controlled Trials, and age groups, All Child: 0-18 years.

Click Go to complete the search. Using MeSH is a very precise, very comprehensive way to search, but does require some extra effort!

CS/December 2007

Lane Medical Library and Knowledge Management Center 4 Researcher’s Toolkit: Clinical Resources