Using NHS Evidence by bookchapter1

Health Services Management Centre School of Social Policy

“Once you have experienced the library you won't want to be without it” Chris Ham, Professor of Health Policy, HSMC & Chief Executive of the King’s Fund

Access a Goldmine of Information HSMC Library & Information Services Park House 40 Edgbaston Park Road Edgbaston Birmingham, B15 2RT

Using NHS Evidence

Tel 0121 414 3672/7060

Fax 0121 414 7051

Email hsmc-library@contacts.bham.ac.uk

Web site www.hsmc.bham.ac.uk/library

Ask a Librarian! Message us for an instant answer

RSS alert Subscribe to the Library’s RSS feed

Facebook Be the Library’s fan on Facebook

Twitter Follow us on Twitter

Skype account hsmclibrary

The Library Staff Rachel Posaner (Manager) Ann Evans (Librarian) Lucy Kelly (Library Assistant)

Opening Times

www.hsmc.bham.ac.uk/library

Library Training Materials: If you require this information in an alternative format (i.e. large print), please contact the Library staff who will make the necessary arrangements

Introductory Guide to searching NHS Evidence

Background...................................................................................................................... 3 NHS Evidence home page............................................................................................. 3 Searching ......................................................................................................................... 4 Search help...................................................................................................................... 5 Searching ..................................................................................................................... 5 Boolean operators (AND, OR and NOT) ................................................................. 5 Searching phrases ...................................................................................................... 5 Wildcard (asterisk*) ................................................................................................... 5 Spelling ......................................................................................................................... 6 Word variations ........................................................................................................... 6 Capitalisation ............................................................................................................... 6 Viewing and refining your results................................................................................ 7 Navigators .................................................................................................................... 7 Displaying the full text of a result ........................................................................... 9 Sharing your results ...................................................................................................... 9 Accreditation mark *new* .......................................................................................... 10 Specialist collections feature box *new* ............................................................. 10 Rate the Results ........................................................................................................... 11 My Evidence .................................................................................................................. 11 How to register.......................................................................................................... 11 Hints for good passwords ........................................................................................ 12 Change password...................................................................................................... 12 Customising My Evidence ........................................................................................ 13 Add a saved search .................................................................................................. 13 Access a saved result ............................................................................................... 13 Delete a saved search.............................................................................................. 14 Create a search alert................................................................................................ 14 Remove a search alert ............................................................................................. 14 Recent search alerts ................................................................................................. 14 My News Feeds .......................................................................................................... 14 www.evidence.nhs.uk

Page 1 of 16

Using NHS Evidence

Provided by NICE ÂŠNational Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. All rights reserved. This material may be freely reproduced for educational and not-for-profit purposes. No reproduction by or for commercial organisations, or for commercial purposes, is allowed without the express written permission of NICE

Add a feed .................................................................................................................. 15 Remove a feed .......................................................................................................... 15 Add a saved result .................................................................................................... 16 Edit profile .................................................................................................................. 16 NHS Evidence is a developing service and we need your feedback in order to develop the site, so please send your comments to us using the Contact Us link shown at the foot of all the NHS Evidence web pages.

www.evidence.nhs.uk

Page 2 of 16

Using NHS Evidence

Background The principle aim of the NHS Evidence service is to provide easy access to a comprehensive evidence base for everyone in health and social care who takes decisions about treatments or the use of resources – including clinicians, public health professionals, commissioners and service managers – thus improving health and patient care. It will build on NICE‟s significant international reputation for developing high quality evidence-based guidance. It provides access to a range of information types, including primary research literature, practical implementation tools, guidelines and policy documents. NHS Evidence sorts, sifts and prioritises a vast range of resources. A new release was launched on 30th October 2009. The home page shown below can be found at www.evidence.nhs.uk . NHS Evidence home page

www.evidence.nhs.uk

Page 3 of 16

Using NHS Evidence

Provided by NICE ©National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. All rights reserved. This material may be freely reproduced for educational and not-for-profit purposes. No reproduction by or for commercial organisations, or for commercial purposes, is allowed without the express written permission of NICE

The home page has been designed to be clear and intuitive. It contains the following drop down menu tabs: About us, My Evidence, Accreditation, Specialist Resources. They are worth exploring: The About Us tab links to: Background information on NHS Evidence Information on the sources of information used Details of the 34 specialist collections The news room gives further details of the NHS Evidence Newsletter, Media, Events and Publications More detail on how the search works. The My Evidence drop down outlines the key benefits of personalisation and has a link to the personalisation registration page. The Accreditation drop down menu gives full details of the NHS Evidence Accreditation Scheme. The Specialist resources tab links to: the licensed book and journals and specialist healthcare database resources (HDAS). These resources can only be accessed via the NHS Athens Authentication system. the 34 NHS Evidence Specialist Collections. You do NOT need an Athens password to browse or search these resources individually.

Searching Choose your main search terms and enter them into the search box. Simply enter words and phrases to get search results based on your entry, e.g. early intervention in psychosis as shown below. NHS Evidence will automatically identify the main www.evidence.nhs.uk

Page 4 of 16

Using NHS Evidence

terms in your search and return results based on these. In the example used, the main terms are shown highlighted in the results, with the word “in” being ignored:

Search help Clicking on Search help beneath the main search box will link you to the additional search tips reproduced below: Searching NHS Evidence provides a simple search of many sources of clinical and social care information. The search can be freely accessed without the need for logging in, and the full text of the search results can be also be freely obtained in most cases. The search will be in many ways familiar to users of well-known internet search engines. You enter terms in the search box, and results are returned which contain all the search terms. Boolean operators (AND, OR and NOT) By default the terms are combined with AND. For example a search for bell’s palsy will actually be performing the following search bells AND palsy and so will find documents containing both words wherever they occur. You can use the OR operator to find alternative terms. For example, search for ("allergic rhinitis" OR hayfever OR "hay fever"). You can also narrow your search to exclude words by using the NOT operator, for example: NSAIDS NOT aspirin. Searching phrases To search for an exact phrase just put quotation marks around the phrase. For example, searching for “bell‟s palsy” will return only those documents where that exact phrase appears. Wildcard (asterisk*) You can use a wildcard to find all variations of a word: for example surg* will find surgeon, surgery and surgical. If you don‟t use the asterisk and search only on surg, you will only pick up resources that use the abbreviation surg. e.g. Guideline 43 References...clinical follow up. Int J Oral Maxillofac Surg 1989; 18: 277-80. [Back] ...adults: a 10 year longitudinal study. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol1989; 68: 9-13...Research Group study. Br J Oral Maxillofac Surg 1992; 30: 78-82. [Back] ... www.evidence.nhs.uk

Page 5 of 16

Using NHS Evidence

Note that „stemming‟ (word variations – see below) is applied where appropriate so you do not have to use a wildcard to search for a plural form as well. Spelling As well as the normal English language dictionary search terms will also be checked against our medical dictionary for accuracy. Should a term be slightly misspelled you will be offered suggestions for correct spelling. Word variations When appropriate our search engine will automatically search for words (nouns and adjectives only) that are related to some or all of your search terms, even if they are spelled differently. For example, if you search for "strategies" our search engine will also retrieve "strategy", and “feet” will retrieve “foot”. Any variants of your terms that were searched for will be highlighted in the snippet of text accompanying each result. See below search is on feet care in diabetes

Capitalisation Our searches are not case sensitive. Therefore regardless of whether you use upper case, lower case or a combination of both our search engine will automatically search for all versions. This also applies to the Boolean operators. Viewing and refining your results When you run a search the Search Results page is displayed. The title of each result is a link to the full text article on the source site. Many articles also have a link called Read Summary which allows you to read an abstract before going to the full text.

www.evidence.nhs.uk

Page 6 of 16

Using NHS Evidence

The search results will be displayed in order of relevancy: the most „relevant‟ results appearing at the top. NHS Evidence aims to enable you to find what you are looking for on the first page. As with many well-known search engines, relevancy takes into account factors such as how frequently the search terms appear and how significant the occurrences are. For example, occurrences in the title or abstract are considered more important than in the full text. NHS Evidence also ranks results based on the relative hierarchy of evidence with Guidelines and Commissioning Guides being promoted above Primary Research articles for example. This means you are presented first with the best evidence available for your search. Provided it is also relevant to a search, information from accredited high quality sources features in the top search results, with the Accreditation Mark clearly displayed. The results are displayed by relevancy by default, but you can also choose to display them ordered by Publication Date with the most recent at the top, by clicking on the “sort these results by date” filter. Navigators You can also extend or refine your search from the Search Results page. Use the results filters – or Navigators - on the left hand side of the page to examine the numbers of results returned for different "Areas of interest", "Types of information", "Clinical queries”, "Sources" or “Medicines”. You can click on any of these to limit your search to these results. You can also add other selections to limit your results still further.

www.evidence.nhs.uk

Page 7 of 16

Using NHS Evidence

The selections appear in the pink bar at the top you can click on these in any order to remove them from your search. You can use these „navigators‟ to filter and refine your search results. The broad „navigator‟ categories are Areas of Interest, Types of Information, Clinical Queries, Sources and Medicines and Devices. Each option within the categories indicates how many results within your existing results set have been assigned to that category, and clicking on an option narrows the search to just display those results. You can combine several selections to produce a really focussed final results set, without having to think of extremely specific search terms before you start. Continuing with the example of early intervention in psychosis: Search terms: First navigator: Second navigator:

early intervention in psychosis Area of Interest Clinical Sources Cochrane

The selected navigator options now appear in a pink bar below the search terms and are labelled as Current Search Filters.

www.evidence.nhs.uk

Page 8 of 16

Using NHS Evidence

You can remove the filters you have applied in any order by clicking on the x in the corner of each box individually. Note that only the options which have results for your search will be displayed within the navigation filters (for example, zero returns will not be displayed). Displaying the full text of a result The title of each search result is a link to the full text on the source site. There may also be a link to read a Summary page on the NHS Evidence site which gives you more information about an article to assist you to decide whether to open the full text.

From the search results page you can also: Re-order your search results by publication date instead of by relevance Change the number of results displayed from the default of 10 to 20, 30, 40 or 50. Sharing your results You can email your search results by completing the email form on the right hand side of the results screen. The recipient receives a copy of the final version of your search.

www.evidence.nhs.uk

Page 9 of 16

Using NHS Evidence

Accreditation mark *new* An accreditation mark beside any of your results means that the type of information, its source and the process for developing it have been approved by the NHS Evidence Advisory Committee.

You may also see the accreditation mark in the Sources navigator, where it will indicate an accredited source. Saving a search *new* see below. Note: You will need to register to save your search question/query Saving a search result *new* see below Note: You will need to register to save your search results Creating a search alert / deleting a search alert see below Note: You will need to register to create alerts. Specialist collections feature box *new* You may notice that for some searches a browse specialist collection link appears before the results are presented. This has been prompted by your search term: as it is likely that the collection highlighted– one of the NHS Evidence Specialist Collections – will provide a useful way to browse the subject of your search, and provide access to documents that have been selected as particularly suitable. For example, if you search for Diabetes, as well around 10519 individual search results, you are also provided with a link to the Diabetes specialist collection, click on the Browse diabetes in Diabetes specialist collection to go to the homepage of the specialist collection.

www.evidence.nhs.uk

Page 10 of 16

Using NHS Evidence

Rate the Results After you perform a search you can rate the results for relevance by selecting a star rating from the panel on the right. After submitting a rating, you can add a comment about why you made the choice. There is also a further opportunity to make a more general comment about the service if you choose to by following the link and using the Contact Us web form. You can also rate a single result from the summary page and make a general comment if you choose to. My Evidence My Evidence makes accessing the latest health information even easier. As well as enjoying the benefits of NHS Evidence, registering for My Evidence will automatically update users on the latest news in their area of specialism or interest. My Evidence allows users to register and create their own space on NHS Evidence. By registering with My Evidence, users can tell NHS Evidence what their particular areas of interests are. How to register Click on the register link on the top left of the home page

www.evidence.nhs.uk

Page 11 of 16

Using NHS Evidence

Complete the required information on the registration form 1. Your name (labelled „display name‟) Choose your display name wisely, as this cannot be edited, it is the name you will see on the screen after signing in. 2. Your email address You can enter contact details in the optional part of the form but that is not required to create an account. After completing the form, click on submit and check your email inbox for a message from NHS Evidence. Follow the instructions in the message to activate your account. Hints for good passwords Your NHS Evidence password must be at least 6 characters including numbers and letters in both upper and lower case. The most secure passwords can't be found in any dictionary, and aren‟t associated with your personal information. Try inserting numbers (eg. Tea4two?), misplaced punctuation (e.g. Pa55word), or just an extra letter and a number (e.g. Eevidence1) . Use the first letters of the words in a phrase. For example, three Blind mice see how they run! would become3Bmshtr! Picking a familiar phrase gives you a memorable, but difficult to guess, password. Change password To change your password, there are two options: You use the „forgotten password‟ link at the time of signing in. After completing the form you will be emailed instructions for entering a new password You can sign-in and edit your profile www.evidence.nhs.uk

Page 12 of 16

Using NHS Evidence

Customising My Evidence You must sign-in to customise NHS Evidence. After signing in to NHS Evidence, your personal page loads and all of the My Evidence features become available: Saved searches, Saved Results, My News Feeds and Recent Search Alerts Add a saved search You must be signed-in to save a search. After performing a search, click on the “Save this search” link which is in the panel below the search box (see image below).

Access a saved result Click on the title of a saved result and if there is an abstract you will be shown the Results detail page. If there is no abstract, the link will open the web document directly.

www.evidence.nhs.uk

Page 13 of 16

Using NHS Evidence

Delete a saved search Click on the “Delete link” in the final column of the Saved searches panel corresponding to the search you wish to delete.

Create a search alert Click on „Create alert‟ next to the name of a saved search to create an alert. Alerts are generated on a weekly basis and an email is sent to you to indicate the number of new records matching your query along with a link to the results page. Remove a search alert In the saved searches panel click on the „Remove alert‟ link next to the name of the saved search. Recent search alerts Details of recently sent search alerts will appear in the „recent search alerts‟ panel. However, when new records relating to your saved searches become available you will receive an email alert from NHS Evidence.

My News Feeds News feeds are a way in which information providers can automatically supply you with updated content. You can choose subject specific news feeds that you want to receive signing in. By default you see the latest three news items from up to five news feeds. You can see more from the feeds by clicking on the “View all” link.

www.evidence.nhs.uk

Page 14 of 16

Using NHS Evidence

Add a feed Click the „Edit Feeds‟ link,. The edit feeds page displays a hierarchical subject category tree on the left. Click the plus symbol to expand the subject tree and display more specific subject categories. To see a list of feeds relevant to a subject category, click the subject name and the main part of the page will display the list of feeds. Use the checkbox to select feeds and click the „Save‟ button to add them.

Remove a feed Click on the feed within the „my news feeds‟ panel, then click the “Unsubscribe” link for the feed you wish to remove.

www.evidence.nhs.uk

Page 15 of 16

Using NHS Evidence

Add a saved result Click on the “Save result” link underneath the document that you want to save (see image above of the search results page). Once you have saved your result, you will automatically get a saved result confirmation. Edit profile After signing in, click on the “Edit your profile” link at the bottom of the screen. From the edit profile page you can: Change your email address Change your contact details Add contact details Change your password

NHS Evidence is a developing service and we need your feedback in order to develop the site, so please send your comments to us using the Contact Us link shown at the foot of all the NHS Evidence web pages.

www.evidence.nhs.uk

Page 16 of 16

Using NHS Evidence