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EBM sources
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Bibliographica Canadiana
Types of 'evidence'
100
The hierarchical 'branch-like' structure in Medline presents the thesaurus by breaking it down into more specific topics
What are MeSH?
100
This resource contains seven databases of high-quality evidence that synthesize the literature without having to read every study
What is the Cochrane Library?
100
In literature searching, the use of everyday natural words and phrases, instead of index terms, to search bibliographic databases
What is keyword (also 'natural language' or 'freetext') searching?
100
This Canadian university is widely seen as the birthplace of evidence-based medicine due to the work of Gordon Guyatt and David Sackett among others.
What is McMaster University?
100
This pyramid has RCTs and systematic reviews at the top followed below by lower levels of evidence such as cohort & case controlled studies and called the [blank] of evidence
What is the hierarchy or 'pyramid' of evidence?
200
This is the number one reason for not reviewing evidence
What is TIME?
200
These studies are considered the most reliable type of clinical study and are most commonly associated with therapy questions
What are randomized controlled trial?
200
This is the name for a search when * $ : or ? are used within words or phrases to search for variants (it is also a way to improve recall in a search)
What is truncation or 'wildcard' searching?
200
This Canadian health librarian working at the McMaster University in the filters unit called HIRU is among the most-cited librarians in Medline
Who is K. Ann McKibbon?
200
The British Medical Journal (BMJ) publishes a synopsis of medical evidence (requiring a subscription) and rates each intervention as:
  • Beneficial
  • Likely to be beneficial
  • Unknown effectiveness
  • Likely to be ineffective
    • What is Clinical Evidence (BMJ)?
    300
    Constructing an effective combination of search terms involves breaking down the question into ‘concepts’ and keywords. P-I-C-O can help to structure the search (but it is not essential that every element is used) and stands for - what?
    What is Patient (population), Intervention, Comparison and Outcome?
    300
    This service (made available by the BMJ Group) incorporates the McMaster PLUS email alerting system and a searchable database of best evidence from the medical literature
    What is EvidenceUpdates?
    300
    These pre-set research methodology filters designed by RB Haynes et al. to assist busy practitioners to access the best available evidence by providing expedient and efficient access to reliable clinical studies via four study categories (therapy, diagnosis, etiology and prognosis) and two types of retrieval emphasis (specific and sensitivity).
    What are clinical queries?
    300
    The five top medical journals are BMJ, Lancet, JAMA and the New Eng J of Medicine and this fifth Canadian journal title that goes back to 1911
    What is the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ)?
    300
    Forest plots are frequently referred to using this colloquial term?
    What is the Blog-o-gram?
    400
    These are used in all searches with two sets ...& include “AND” “OR” and “NOT” (and are named after a famous English mathematician).
    What are Boolean operators (see George Boole)?
    400
    This Cochrane database represents the best single source for RCTs / CCTs
    What is CENTRAL?
    400
    These predefined strategies improve recall in a search (and are highly sensitive in retrieving 'all relevant articles')
    What are search filters or hedges?
    400
    PubMed clinical queries are tested by this Canadian researcher and his team
    Who isBrian Haynes?
    400
    These two metasearch tools have been created to search across several sources of evidence all at once
    What is SumSearch and the TRIP Database?
    500
    These types of questions are patient-specific, address clearly defined clinical questions (e.g., prevention, therapy, diagnosis)
    What are foreground questions?
    500
    This popular database requires a subscription and is viewed by health librarians as overpriced ...though clinicians in internal medicine areas often ask for it
    What is UpToDate?
    500
    ...the name for qualifiers in MeSH that increase precision... all 83 of them 'float' among 24,000+ MeSH
    What are the MeSH topical qualifiers or subheadings?
    500
    When a Canadian study is not published in one of the major biomedical indexes but useful to Canadian physicians it is said to be "this type of literature"
    What is the grey literature?
    500
    These reviews of the literature aim for the highest recall ....and require reproducible searches and detailed documentation
    What are systematic reviews?
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