Searching for Evidence: The Value of a Librarian-Clinician Collaboration—The Librarian’s Role

Abstract

More than ever before, home health care practitioners are expected to support their clinical decision making with the best available scientific evidence. It is important for these practitioners to understand the process involved and possess the necessary resources and skills. Librarians and other information professionals trained in performing extensive literature and database searches are ideal partners during the search for evidence. This article identifies and describes those databases most likely to include citations and reviews of research relevant to the home health care practitioner engaging in the evidence search phase of the EBP process, including the Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), and others, and provides practical suggestions for devising search strategies and optimizing retrieval based upon a well-built clinical question.