Clinical information and EBP resources
Evidence based practice
Good health professionals inform their clinical practice by consulting the best evidence available to them - this is evidence based practice. Understanding how to form clinical questions, determine the level and type of evidence available to answer questions and find clinical evidence are all important evidence based practice skills. Find out more about the evidence based approach in the Evidence Based Practice subject guide.
Evidence for clinical practice might include research journal articles, evidence summaries, evidence based guidelines, point-of-care tools and clinical trials.
Finding clinical evidence
The resources below may assist you in your search for clinical evidence.
Journal articles
Evidence based research is most commonly published in journal articles. Use the journal article databases on the Journals and journal articles page to find research articles for clinical questions. Medline, Pubmed, Embase and CINAHL are good places to start looking for research articles.
Clinical evidence databases
- PEDro : Physiotherapy Evidence Database
A database of evidence relevant to physiotherapy. PEDro contains citations of thousands of randomised controlled trials, systematic reviews and evidence-based clinical practice guidelines relevant to physiotherapy.
- JBI EBP database (Ovid)Contains a wide range of summarized and appraised evidence to inform practice. Evidence available in seven publication types: Evidence Based Recommended Practices, Evidence Summaries, Best Practice Information Sheets, Systematic Reviews, Consumer Information Sheets, Systematic Review Protocols, and Technical Reports.
- ClinicalKey (Elsevier)Designed to provide physicians with fast, clinically-relevant answers.
- Cochrane Library
Provides in-depth research summaries (systematic reviews), and research journal articles with a focus on evidence-based medicine and healthcare.
- PubMed Clinical QueriesA specialized search within PubMed that focusses on evidence based clinical studies, systematic reviews, and medical genetics. Note: Griffith University users may not have access to the full-text as user registration, a subscription fee, or some other type of fee may be required to access the full-text of articles in some journals.
- OTseekerOTseeker is a database that contains abstracts of systematic reviews and randomised controlled trials relevant to occupational therapy.
- CINAHL Complete (EBSCOhost)CINAHL Evidence-based care sheets provide evidence summaries for a range of conditions.
Clinical guidelines
Clinical guidelines provide evidence based information to support decision-making for patient care. Clinical guidelines can often be found in journal articles or clinical evidence databases, as well as in collections from national or state based groups.
- MEDLINE (EBSCOhost)Apply the 'Practice Guidelines' limit to your search to find clinical guidelines in Medline
- EmbaseIncludes journals and other publications in the biomedical sciences.
- CINAHL Complete (EBSCOhost)Apply the 'Practice Guidelines' limit to your search, or try other limit options such as 'Care Plan' or 'Clinical Innovations' or 'Critical Path or Protocol'.
- ClinicalKey (Elsevier)In ClinicalKey guidelines can be browsed or searched under the guidelines tab.
- JBI EBP database (Ovid)Apply the 'Recommended Practices', 'Evidence Summaries' or 'Best Practice Information Sheets' publication types to identify practice guidelines.
- Therapeutic Guidelines
Find clinical guidelines and therapeutic recommendations for a wide range of medical disorders.
Australian guidelines
- NHMRC Clinical Practice GuidelinesContains a range of information on clinical practice Guidelines for the community, and specialist information for researchers, clinicians and other health professionals.
- Guidelines International NetworkFind Australian guidelines via the Guidelines International Network (GIN).
- Queensland Health - Clinical guidelines and proceduresQueensland Health guidelines collection
International
- National Institute for health and care Excellence (NICE) Guidance - UKCollection of NICE guidance
- National Guideline Clearinghouse (US)Resource from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) collecting summaries of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines.
Appraisal of clinical guidelines
The benefits of practice guidelines are only as good as the quality of the guidelines themselves.
AGREE II (Appraisal of Guidelines for Research & Evaluation) is an internationally recognised, validated tool for the critical appraisal of clinical guidelines.
Point-of-care resources
- ClinicalKey (Elsevier)The Australian edition of ClinicalKey is a dynamic clinical resource designed to provide physicians with fast, clinically-relevant answers.
- UpToDate
Find answers to clinical questions that arise in daily practice. Covers a wide array of topics and medical specialties. Includes links to full text articles, drug interaction databases and medical calculators.
- DynaMedDynaMed is a decision support tool that clinicians go to for answers. It is updated daily to produce a collection of the most current evidence curated from more than 500 medical journals.
Clinical trial websites
Evidence from registered clinical trials (which may not have been published) can provide valuable information.
- Australian New Zealand Clinical Trial RegistryThe Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR) is a register of clinical trials being undertaken in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. The ANZCTR includes trials from the full spectrum of therapeutic areas of pharmaceuticals, surgical procedures, preventive measures, lifestyle, devices, treatment and rehabilitation strategies and complementary therapies.
- ClinicalTrials.govInformation that explains and describes clinical trials. Studies listed in the database are conducted in over 100 countries.
