You used an electronic index, a guideline index, and a web search engine to retrieve information relevant to your clinical problem. Compare and contrast your results. Which resources were useful/ not useful for your information retrieval task, and why?
I used both Pubmed and CINAHL electronic databases to run similar searches. Pubmed produced a larger number of articles. Approximately half of the articles produced by the CINAHL search provided full-text articles. There were very few full-text articles available from the Pubmed results. I then ran a search on Google using similar criteria (including RCTs and meta-analysis). This produced thousands more articles (466,000), was much faster, did not require multiple screens or access through the university library, and had immediate full-text for all articles that I clicked on. The AHRQ site provides sites that have guidelines developed by specific organizations from clinical evidence. I would consider this the most trusted site for evidence-based information.
One limitation of Google is usually the inability to find "full text" articles. Often you may be fooled by a link to a full text, only to find that you will need to pay or subscribe. I'm surprised you found all of your articles--I'm putting you on my next search. :)
ReplyDelete