Evidence based health care

Critical appraisal and review of research performed gives health care practitioners the evidence needed to provide effective health care. The results of this appraisal and review are disseminated in various ways as listed below. Access learning resources to improve your critical appraisal skills on the NHS CASP website.

The Cochrane Library

This electronic library contains:

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (full text)
Otherl reviews (Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness)
Clinical Trials
Health Technology Assessment database
NHS Economic Evaluation database
Access via Wiley Interscience no password needed.

Hitting the Headlines

The NHS Evidence has commissioned the NHS Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD) at the University of York, to assess the reliability of both the journalists' reporting of health stories and the research on which they are based. CRD staff provide a rapid assessment of the original research behind the news story and evaluate how accurately the journalists have reported the findings of the research. CRD produces summaries of news stories within 48 hours of their publication.

Access via NHS Evidence No password needed.

Guidelines and Care pathways

Guidelines

The NHS Evidence  Guidelines Finder indexes over 1000 selected care guidelines available in fulltext format online. Coverage is predominately UK with some additional international guidelines.

Care Pathways

The contract for the running of this service has expired and the collection has not been recently updated, making the information out-of-date and potentially no longer reliable. As an alternative there is a widespread availability of tools such as the Map of Medicine.

Map of Medicine Healthguides present the different steps of a patient journey, from symptoms to diagnosis and treatment, in easy to follow charts. They are designed to provide you with information about your condition and available treatments.

Access via NHS Evidence 


Journals


Websites

There are too many EBM resources on the Internet to list individually, but Netting the evidence , a site maintained by Andrew Booth of the University of Sheffield: School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) provides a very useful overview.

Research in progress

The National Research Register contains details of over 42,000 current NHS funded projects as well as an archive of recently completed projects. It also includes the MRC Clinical Trials Register and the Ongoing Reviews Database from York.

Clinical Trials Databases The National Institute of Health's "one-stop shopping" area for information about clinical trials. Here you can access several databases containing facts about both public and privately supported clinical studies. Some of these studies are open to new participants while others have already completed enrollment.

RDfunding For all health-related research funding