University Libraries

In preparation for the session with your librarian, Hanna Schmillen, please take 20-30 minutes to review the following materials labeled 1-3.

1. Before class, please watch this 3-minute video on how to navigate the library's homepage.

This is important so you know how to get to databases and other resources. Remember to connect to PubMed, SportDiscus, and other relevant research databases through the library's website. That way you ensure better access to more full-text of articles.

2. Before class, review Evidence-Based Practice?

Evidence-Based Practice is important because it includes 3 important pillars: clinical expertise (your brilliant brain), patient values, and best research evidence (why you are working on this CAT assignment).

Not all evidence is created equally. The medical literature is immense, but only a small portion of it is immediately useful in answering clinical questions. The literature reports the whole spectrum of the scientific research process. Different study types aim to answer different kinds of questions (qualitative vs. quantitative). Understanding the type of study and it's potential biases help you to make good decisions when evaluating literature.

Explore the Pyramid of Evidence and the study design tab to identify where different methodologies lie. The higher up the pyramid, the more robust the study and thus less biased. And for your CAT assignment, you are tasked with finding the best available evidence so it's crucial that you are familiar with study types.

3. Before class, make sure you have your topic in-mind and your laptop ready for searching. Bonus points if you have your PICOT question already formulated.

End of prep work! See you soon.

Critically Appraised Topic (CAT) a short summary of the best evidence to a focused, clinical question.  It allows users (clinicians) to use the results in such a way that they can easily be shared or stored for later use. How to Write a Critically Appraised Topic (CAT). And here is an example CAT - Skin Stretching for Burn Scar Excision. 

 Five Steps of EBP and CAT

• Asking a focused and answerable question that translates uncertainty to an answerable question (AKA your PICO question - More on PICO questions here)

• Searching for the best available evidence and provide methodology

• Critically appraising the evidence for validity and clinical relevance

• Applying the results to practice

• Evaluation of performance & summarizing 

What are MeSH headings?

MeSH is PubMed's controlled vocabulary. This means that every record that is in PubMed will be assigned MeSH terms (categories) as a way to organize them and make articles easier to find. MeSH terms do some work for you because they associate groups of similar concepts together. More about MeSH on my EBP guide and where to find them.