Clinical Information & EBP
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. Medline, Pubmed, Embase and CINAHL are good places to start looking for research articles.
Clinical evidence databases
- PEN : practice-based evidence in nutrition
PEN is a fully searchable, full-text database of information about dietetics, developed from key practice questions and evidence-based answers, with links to tools and resources consistent with the evidence. Knowledge pathways are grouped under four broad Practice Categories: Population Health/Lifecycle; Health Condition/Disease; Food/Nutrients; Professional Practice.
- 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 LibraryCochrane Reviews provide in-depth research summaries, data, and interpretations of clinical trial results 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.
- 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 article 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
- 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
- Medical Journal of Australia - Guidelines and StatementsThe Medical Journal of Australia is a peer-reviewed medical journal published 22 times a year. It is the official journal of the Australian Medical Association.
- 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.
- Queensland Health - Clinical Guidelines and ProceduresQueensland Health guidelines collection
- Guidelines International NetworkFind Australian guidelines via the Guidelines International Network (GIN).
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
- BMJ Best PracticeBest Practice is a decision-support tool at the point of care. Latest research evidence, guidelines and expert opinion are presented in a step-by-step approach, covering prevention, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis. Provides a second opinion, without the need for checking multiple resources. Drug content is provided by Martindale.
- ClinicalKey (Elsevier)The Australian edition of ClinicalKey is a dynamic clinical resource designed to provide physicians with fast, clinically-relevant answers.
- Therapeutic Guidelines
Find clinical guidelines and therapeutic recommendations for a wide range of medical disorders.
- 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.
- PLOS Clinical TrialsPLOS Collections aggregate and curate related content from PLOS journals and the PLOS Blogs Network to provide structured access to papers of interest in the PLOS corpus and demonstrate innovative approaches to the assessment, organization and reuse of research, data and commentary.
- Australian Clinical TrialsAustralianClinicalTrials.gov.au is a joint initiative between the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science to provide information and resources to consumers, health care providers, researchers and industry about clinical trials.
- EU Clinical Trials RegisterThe EU Clinical Trials Register contains information on interventional clinical trials on medicines conducted in the European Union (EU), or the European Economic Area (EEA) which started after 1 May 2004.
- International Clinical Trials Registry PlatformThe ICTRP Search Portal aims to provide a single point of access to information about ongoing and completed clinical trials. It provides a searchable database containing the trial registration data sets made available by data providers around the world meeting criteria for content and quality control.
- ISRCTN registryThe ISRCTN registry is a primary clinical trial registry recognised by WHO and ICMJE that accepts all clinical research studies (whether proposed, ongoing or completed), providing content validation and curation and the unique identification number necessary for publication. All study records in the database are freely accessible and searchable.
