LibGuides: Evidence Based Medicine: Databases to Search

Filtered Information

▲ Systematic Reviews

Cochrane Library A collection of six databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making, and a seventh database that provides information about Cochrane groups.
Ovid MEDLINE Enter your search query. Click on the “Limits” icon; select “Systematic Reviews” under “Subject Subsets.
PubMed LinkOut Click on “Clinical Queries” on the left side of the screen; select “Find Systematic Reviews” and enter your search query.
See our PubMed LibGuide for helpful information.
PubMed Clinical Queries The PubMed Clinical Queries Page is designed to filter one search by three clinical research areas: Clinical Study Categories, Systematic Reviews, and Medical Genetics.

▲ Critically-Appraised Topics

Evaluate and synthesize multiple research studies.

UpToDate Clinical information resource designed to provide health care professionals concise, practical answers needed at the point of care.
Mobile App Installation Instructions
1. Go to UpToDate and click Log In in the top left corner on your tablet, or Log In / Register in the top right corner on your computer.
2. Once you have your account created, download the UpToDate app on your mobile device. Links to the app can be found here.
3. Install the app and sign in using the username and password you created.
*If you already have an UpToDate account, you do NOT need to create another. Users may want to update their e-mail or username by logging in and changing them (e.g., jdoe@mcw.edu) in the Contact Information or User Name and Password section.
Essential Evidence Plus Clinical decision support system includes 13,000+ topics, guidelines, tools, and images covering common conditions, diseases, and procedures clinicians encounter daily. Every recommendation includes strength-of-evidence rating. Access POEMs (Patient Oriented Evidence that Matters) Research Summaries and set up email alerts by registering for a MySTAT!Ref account.
Mobile App Installation Instructions
1. On a computer or tablet, create an account in STAT!Ref. View directions (PDF) for creating an account.
2. Once you have a username and password, you can download the STAT!Ref Mobile app on your mobile device from the App Store, Google Play, or Amazon.
3. Launch the STAT!Ref app from your device and sign in using the username and password you created.
4. Link to further instructions: http://www.statref.com/products/srMobile.html
Natural Medicines Provides comprehensive information about dietary supplements, natural medicines, and complementary, alternative, and integrative therapies.

▲ Critically-Appraised Articles

Evaluate and synthesize individual research studies.

ACP Journal Club Summarizes the best new evidence for internal medicine from 120+ clinical journals. Published as a monthly feature in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Unfiltered Information

▲ ▲ ▲ Unfiltered Information

Literature databases for RCTs, cohort studies, case-controlled studies, case series, etc.)

Ovid MEDLINE Search journal citations and abstracts for biomedical literature. Includes links to MCW Libraries' journal subscriptions.
PubMed LinkOut Compriseds more than 38 million citations for biomedicatl literature from Medline, life sciences journals, and online books. Includes links to MCW Libraries' journal subscriptions.
See our PubMed LibGuide for helpful information.
PubMed Clinical Queries The PubMed Clinical Queries Page is designed to filter one search by three clinical research areas: Clinical Study Categories, Systematic Reviews, and Medical Genetics.
Scopus Citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources with tools to track, analyze and visualize research. Covers the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities from 5,000+ international publishers.
Web of Science
PsycINFO Contains citations to journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations in the field of psychology and the psychological aspects of related disciplines such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, pharmacology, physiology, and social sciences. Journal coverage spans 1806-present.
ScienceDirect Find citations to articles and book chapters in the fields of physical sciences, engineering, life sciences, health sciences, social sciences and humanities. Full text available for licensed content.
NCBI Genome Databases Access numerous sequence databases including Nucleotide, Protein, Genome, Structure, and SNP. The remaining databases are Taxonomy, Gene, UniGene, HomoloGene, Conserved Domains, and Probe. Links to the Human Genome, Map Viewer, and BLAST are on the toolbar.
View a video on NCBI's Molecular Databases, produced by the MCW Libraries.

Trip Database
Find and high-quality research evidence to support practice and/or care.

Background Information & Expert Opinion

▲ Background Information/ Textbooks

Evidence in these resources may vary from expert opinion to high levels of evidence.

AccessEmergency Medicine Provides quick diagnosis and treatment ranging from neurologic and orthopedic emergencies, to poisoning and trauma. View books, procedures, videos, image library, drug database, board review resources and more.
AccessMedicine Access more than medical books, thousands of images and illustrations, videos, interactive self-assessment, cases, drug information, and time-saving diagnostic and point-of-care tools.
Mobile App Installation Instructions
1. Sign up for a MyAccess account in AccessMedicine.
  Please note - To maintain your free app, you will need to log in to your MyAccess account once every 90 days from a computer connected to the MCW, CHW, or Froedtert network, or through OpenAthens.
2. Download the AccessMedicine app on to your mobile device.
3. Launch the AccessMedicine app from your device and sign in using the username and password you created.
AccessPediatrics Content covers pediatric practice, from neonatology through adolescent medicine. View books, procedures, videos, image library, drug database, board review resources and more.
AccessPharmacy Comprehensive resource for pharmacy education and practice, including books, multimedia, drug database, drug therapy cases, study tools, and more.
AccessSurgery Comprehensive resource for surgery education that provides textbooks, videos, animations, a differential diagnosis tool, interactive board review, and more.
Books@Ovid Includes electronic versions of important and trusted reference textbooks from a variety of medical and health science disciplines.
ClinicalKey Featuring topic pages, books, journals, medical and procedural videos, millions of images, content from First Consult, and much more. Account registration required for access to book PDFs, Presentation Maker, and other features.
Mobile App Installation Instructions:
1. Create an account in ClinicalKey. You must create your account on a computer or tablet connected to the MCW network either on campus or off campus while logged into OpenAthens. Click Register in the top, right corner of the screen and fill out the form.
  1. Use your affiliated institutional email address (MCW, Froedtert, or CHW) to create your account.
  2. Activate your account through a confirmation email.
  3. Apply for Self-Managed Remote Access to view all subscribed content when off campus. See the ClinicalKey Information/FAQs guide for instructions.
2. Once you have a username and password, you can download the ClinicalKey Mobile App on your mobile device from the App Store or Google Play.
3. Launch the ClinicalKey app from your device and sign in using the username and password you created.
Please note - To maintain your free app, you will need to log in to the ClinicalKey website with your account every 180 days.
Ebook Central Growing multidisciplinary e-book collection from leading academic publishers. Click on the Sign In or Bookshelf tabs and use your off-campus access login credentials to access your Ebook Central bookshelf account and special features.
See ProQuest Ebook Central LibGuide for more information.
LWW Health Library Access basic science, physical examination, epidemiology, ethics and review titles plus images, multimedia, cases, and interactive question banks. Some of the supplementary content (e.g., audio heart sounds) is Flash-based, and not compatible with Apple mobile devices.
Red Book Provides clinically useful information on the manifestations, etiology, epidemiology, diagnosis, and treatment of 200+ childhood infectious diseases.
Thieme Clinical Collection Includes titles from medical specialties such as internal medicine, neurosurgery, orthopedics, otolaryngology, and radiology. MCW Libraries provides access to the 2010 collection.
STAT!Ref Contains the full-text of primary care, nursing, and health science writing texts. Also includes Stedman's Medical Dictionary, Evidence Alerts, EBMcalc, Current Procedure Codes with RVUs, ICD-9-CM, ICD-10-CM, ICD-10-PCS, and ICD Code Conversion Tools.
Mobile App Installation Instructions
1. On a computer or tablet, create an account in STAT!Ref. View directions (PDF) for creating an account.
2. Once you have a username and password, you can download the STAT!Ref Mobile app on your mobile device from the App Store, Google Play, or Amazon.
3. Launch the STAT!Ref app from your device and sign in using the username and password you created.
4. Link to further instructions: http://www.statref.com/products/srMobile.html

Other Resources

Evidence in these resources may vary from expert opinion to high levels of evidence.

Cell Signalling Biology Resource for researchers, teachers and students that describes the biology of cell signalling. The emerging information on cell signalling pathways is integrated and presented within the context of specific cell types and processes. 
GenomeWeb Content includes GenomeWeb Daily News, The Daily Scan, and Genome Technology magazine.
Register with an mcw.edu email account to gain access to the content within GenomeWeb.
Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition Provided by BadgerLink, this database provides 350+ scholarly full-text journals focusing on medical disciplines and also features abstracts and indexing for over 830+ journals.
OMMBID Online Metabolic and Molecular Bases of Inherited Disease (OMMBID) offers the latest knowledge on the molecular and metabolic underpinnings of a growing list of inherited diseases, as well as updates on pathophysiology and treatment.
PsychiatryOnline Premium Online access to DSM-5 Library and a collection of books, journals, practice guidelines, and medication and mental disorder information handouts for patients from American Psychiatric Association Publishing. Subscription includes access to Premium Books.
VisualDx Features thousands of medical images and specialist-level knowledge to help diagnose, treat, and manage visually identifiable diseases, drug reactions, and infections. Images from VisualDx may be used in presentations.
Mobile App Installation Instructions
1. Go to VisualDx, scroll to the bottom of the page and select “Get the Mobile App.”
2. If you don't already have one, create a personal VisualDx account.
3. Once you have a username and password, download the free VisualDx Mobile app from iTunes or Google Play.
4. Launch the VisualDx app from your device and sign in using the username and password you created.

Find the best study design for your question

Clinical Question	Suggested Best Study
Harm/Etiology	RCT > cohort > case control > case series
Clinical Exam	prospective, blind comparison to gold standard
Diagnosis	prospective, blind comparison to gold standard
Therapy	RCT > cohort > case control > case series
Prevention	RCT > cohort study > case control > case series
Prognosis	cohort study > case control > case series
Cost Benefit	economic analysis

adapted from Duke Libraries' Introduction to Evidence Based Practice

Definitions of Study Types

(From CEBM's Glossary and Duke Libraries' Intro to Evidence-Based Practice)

Case report / Case series: A report on a series of patients with an outcome of interest. No control group is involved.

Case control study: A study which involves identifying patients who have the outcome of interest (cases) and patients without the same outcome (controls), and looking back to see if they had the exposure of interest.

Cohort study: Involves identification of two groups (cohorts) of patients, one which received the exposure of interest, and one which did not, and following these cohorts forward for the outcome of interest.

Randomized controlled clinical trial: Participants are randomly allocated into an experimental group or a control group and followed over time for the variables/outcomes of interest.

Systematic review: A summary of the medical literature that uses explicit methods to perform a comprehensive literature search and critical appraisal of individual studies and that uses appropriate statistical techniques to combine these valid studies.

Meta-analysis: A systematic review that uses quantitative methods to synthesize and summarize the results.

Cross sectional study: The observation of a defined population at a single point in time or time interval. Exposure and outcome are determined simultaneously.

Prospective, blind comparison to a gold standard: Studies that show the efficacy of a diagnostic test are also called prospective, blind comparison to a gold standard study. This is a controlled trial that looks at patients with varying degrees of an illness and administers both diagnostic tests — the test under investigation and the “gold standard” test — to all of the patients in the study group. The sensitivity and specificity of the new test are compared to that of the gold standard to determine potential usefulness.

Qualitative research: answers a wide variety of questions related to human responses to actual or potential health problems.The purpose of qualitative research is to describe, explore and explain the health-related phenomena being studied.

Retrospective cohort: follows the same direction of inquiry as a cohort study. Subjects begin with the presence or absence of an exposure or risk factor and are followed until the outcome of interest is observed. However, this study design uses information that has been collected in the past and kept in files or databases. Patients are identified for exposure or non-exposures and the data is followed forward to an effect or outcome of interest.