Searching Database for Published Guidelines
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Goal In addition to web resources, guidelines are also available as printed documents published by a variety of scientific journals. By searching databases such as MEDLINE, you can obtain guidelines on a particular topic that you are interested. The following is a step-by-step demonstration of how to search MEDLINE for guidelines.
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Searching For Guidelines From the Bio-Medical
Library Homepage (www.biomed.lib.umn.edu),
click on the button
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Searching For Guidelines Next, choose the most recent MEDLINE segment from the list:
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Searching For Guidelines Now let's start the search. Type in the keywords of the subject that you are interested. For instance, if you want to know about the treatment of patients with eating disorders, type Eating Disorder and then click Perform Search:
(Note: to learn more about the tools (e.g. Author, Title) on the toolbar, go to module Searching Tools).
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Searching For Guidelines Next you will find that MEDLINE automatically maps your keyword to Subject Heading that exists in the database. You can click on the hypertext link to view related terms and select either more general or more specific terms that are best fit your purpose. For now, we think the heading Eating Disorders is fine so we select it and Continue the search:
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Searching For Guidelines A search on the subject heading of eating disorders produces a listing of all Subheadings which enable you to narrow your search by choosing single or multiple interesting topics. If you don't want to miss any information, select Include All Subheadings and then continue the search :
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Searching For Guidelines The search history shows that there are 2035 entries on eating disorders in the MEDLINE database. Not all of them are guidelines. To obtain only guidelines, press the Limit button on the tool bar:
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Searching For Guidelines After pressing the Limit button, you will find scroll-down menus from which you can choose Journal Subsets, Age Groups, Animal Types, Publication Types, and Languages. To find guidelines in English, we select Practice Guideline and English and then click on the Limit Search button:
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Searching For Guidelines The search results show that 4 out of the 2035 entries on eating disorders are guidelines in English language. Next we can click on Display to view the 4 guidelines:
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Searching For Guidelines Listed are titles of the guidelines, where and when they are published. There are also hypertext links which will lead you to more detailed information about a guideline. One of the guidelines is available full text. Click on Full Text will enable you to read the entire article right away. For those without full text, you can go to the Bio-Medical Library and make copies out of the journal.
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Searching For Guidelines This section shows that it is not very complicated to look for published clinical and practice guidelines through database searching. You can use the same strategies demonstrated here to search other databases such as ACP Best Evidence, HealthStar, CancerLit, and CINAHL. Our learning module section demonstrates database searching strategies, with each module being designed for a specific database. Module 1 demonstrates searching ACP Best Evidence, module 2 demonstrates MEDLINE, module 3 demonstrates CINAHL, and module 4 demonstrates COCHRANE Database of Systematic Reviews.
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