Evidence searches for quality improvement

Guidance for this type of search.

Notes

The suggested time to allocate to this search: 3-6 hours.

Please read:

  • "All evidence searches" (see "Quick links") before proceeding
  • and the "Supplement" section for examples of this type of search

Planning

If possible, arrange a meeting with the requester to understand the aims and background of the project. If there is a project group, join it, or at least attend a meeting to get full brief of project.

Execution

Search for existing QI projects that are similar, as well as for regular (non-QI specific) evidence for the project.

If you have access to a network of QI projects such as Life QI, check this to see if any similar QI projects are listed.

Search for relevant guidelines from international, national and local sources as appropriate.  For example:

  • Trip Database
  • NICE
  • Clinical Decision Support tools (e.g. DynaMed Plus contains links to various international guidelines).

Search bibliographic databases such as:

  • AMED
  • BNI
  • CINAHL
  • Embase
  • Emcare
  • HMIC
  • Medline
  • PsycINFO
  • PubMed etc.

Search preprint servers (Europe PMC etc.) and Google Scholar for books or other published information.

Use Google search for examples of what other NHS organisations have done

Include “NHS” in your terms, and/or specify your country as UK, and/or limit the search to sites ending with “…nhs.uk” URLs using the limits site:nhs.uk or inurl:nhs.

Use the doctype:doc or doctype:pdf limits to pick up policy documents and guidelines from around the country.

See "Advanced Google" in "Quick links" within for more information. A search using the Carrot2 search engine may also present you with new evidence.

Search grey literature sources and subject-specific sites:

  • independent charities
  • governmental and nongovernmental organisations
  • think tanks like The Health Foundation, The King's Fund, Nuffield Trust and Health Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP), etc.

Search BMJ Open Quality and BMJ Quality and Safety via their websites, for articles and commentary.

Search locally within your book and ebook catalogue for anything additional that could be useful, including general texts on the area of interest, and guidance on conducting a QI project if needed.

If your service keeps a core list of QI resources that could be useful for the requester to read then search within this and/or direct the requesters to this.

Consider directing the requester towards the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare’s Sustainability in Quality Improvement (SusQI) framework.

Results

Categorise your deduplicated results, including links to the full text wherever possible, and highlight key ones to make your report user-friendly.