Sample summaries and responses
for different types of searches.
Introduction
The supplement contains:
- real-life example requests, responses and reports for each type of evidence search outlined in the National Searching Guidance
- templates for email correspondence with requesters
- an evidence searching process map, showing how one service undertakes mediated evidence services
- a systematic review strategy template
- an example spreadsheet, showing how one colleague organises and records their search strategy and results
Every topic and requester is different: no one report can represent a perfect example and a report that one requester finds invaluable may not prove as useful to someone else.
If you can establish a dialogue with your requester and an ongoing relationship then you can better meet their individual needs.
These examples will be updated and added-to as colleagues submit new ones. If you would like to submit an example, please contact Adam Tocock on [email protected].
Audit
Example 1
“The link between NIV pressures and aerophagia in the OHS cohort of patients, to determine if F2F follow up is required” search for audit.
Example 2
Request received via email:
“... Can I ask you for a favour? can you please do a search on how to perform an audit on Hand Hygiene for Staff in hospital? Basically, I want to observe whether Staff are performing their Hand Hygiene...”
Business case
Example 1
“Lateral tilt - does it reduce pressure sores?” search for a business case.
Example 2
“Use of iPads/Apps/Computers in Speech and Language Therapy.”
Care of a specific patient
Example 1
Guidelines/any evidence for what anticoagulation to use in the context of thromboembolism (esp. pulmonary embolism) and intracranial haemorrhage (esp. subarachnoid haemorrhage) at the same time.
Response from librarian:
“Dear …,
Hope this email finds you well.
Please find attached the results of your requested search on: "Guidelines (or other evidence) for what anticoagulation to use in context of thromboembolisms (esp. pulmonary embolism) and intracranial haemorrhage (esp. subarachnoid haemorrhage) at the same time" [results from within last 10 years with a few minor exceptions]
I regret that again I don't have a solid answer for you following a broad search of several bibliographic databases and other healthcare information sources. In the attached report I've presented the one related guidance document I found first of all, followed by BMJ Best Practice and UptoDate entries (shared by a colleague but you should be able to access - let me know if not), then review articles/meta-analyses retrieved by a sensitive/inclusive search, and finally original research retrieved by a specific/narrow search.
As always with searches with a tight turnaround, I have to advise that these results cannot be considered comprehensive - I'll be able dedicate more time to a truly exhaustive search with a greater yield if you'd like though. If you can share anything useful you found on the topic - I think you mentioned a couple of case studies - I'll use that as a sighter to try and retrieve further evidence.
If you have any questions about the search strategy or the results, if there's anything I've misconstrued from your request or if you would like the results in another format, do not hesitate to get in touch.
Please let us know what impact the results of this search have had using the [feedback form] on the KnowledgeShare website (no login required). Evidence of impact is vital for the continuation of this service.
Look forward to hearing from you…”
Example 2
Request received via library services evidence search request form:
Response from librarian:
“Dear [...],
Please find attached your requested search on: "Biozoon or stabilised edible foam for adults with dysphagia/swallowing difficulties".
I used a sensitive/broad strategy to retrieve any and all articles indexed in several healthcare information sources that contained mention of Biozoon or edible foams. This retrieved very little, so I have included the full yield for your consideration.
The only really useful looking paper I found is "Healthcare Professionals' Perceptions of Stabilized EdibleFoam with Adults with Severe Dysphagia; an exploratory study", #3 in the report, and I have attached the full text of this. There is also a useful looking couple of videos on Youtube from the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability, which are linked-to in the attached report.
Did you expect such a dearth of evidence in this area? It seems you're at the vanguard of something again!
You can access the full text of articles in the attached report by clicking the hyperlinks and signing-in with your NHS OpenAthens username/password if prompted. If you do not currently have an OpenAthens account you can register for one using your NHS email address (you will be emailed to set your own password) or contact us at [...] for help.
The articles we do not have direct access to can be ordered through our inter-library loans service (these may take a few days to arrive). To make article requests, please contact us at the address below or call us.
If you have any questions about the search or search results do not hesitate to get in touch.
Please let us know what impact the results of this search have had using this [feedback form] on the KnowledgeShare website (no login required). Evidence of impact is vital for the continuation of this service.”
Commissioning
Example 1
“What is the evidence base for having separate dementia wards in NHS mental health services?”
Example 2
“Evidence/examples of collaboration or mergers between NHS organisations improving health outcomes.”
Example 3
“Impact of payment and incentive schemes on increasing the use of NHS health checks by GPs”
Coursework or study
Example 1
Dear …
Hope this email finds you well.
Thank you for completing our online evidence search request form.
I regret that because your request for articles on “reflection and patient interviews” is going towards coursework/study, we cannot conduct a full search of the evidence on your behalf, as per our policy.
I have however done a quick search of the NHS Knowledge and Library Hub for peer-reviewed research articles from the last 5 years with the term "patient interview" in their titles, which you will be able to access the full text of, and/or download immediately. There's a link to them all here:
You can log in with you NHS OpenAthens username and password (see the yellow bar at the top of the page) to see the links to the full text. If you don't have a username/password you can sign-up for one.
There are about 130 articles there to browse through altogether, covering lots of facets of patient interviews.
We can also offer you a training session where you can learn how to search healthcare databases on your specific topic and others should you wish, just let us know when suits and we can do this virtually or in person within a couple of hours.
Hope this helps, let me know if you have trouble accessing these results or you can't find anything useful amongst them.
All the best …”
Example 2
Dear …
Hope this email finds you well.
Thank you for requesting an evidence search. I regret that as your search is going towards your coursework we cannot perform a full search on your behalf, as the literature search forms part of your learning objectives and will be assessed as your work.
We can instead arrange a training session at a time and place of your convenience where we can show you how to search the literature to find evidence on your topic. You'll come away with useful papers for your coursework and you’ll have done the majority of the literature search part! Please let me know when you'd like to arrange this training.
In the meantime here are some preliminary results I found by searching
We can find more results at the training session.
Look forward to hearing from you…”
General Interest or Continuing Professional Development
Example 1
“Best practice for patients with cognitive communication disorder following brain injury in assessment and intervention for speech and language therapy” search for general interest/CPD.
Example 2
“Cerebral palsy, aspiration, ageing swallow and dysphagia. Speech and language therapy” search for general interest/CPD.
Patient information
Request forwarded to librarian, who asked for some clarification
Dear
Your email was forwarded to me- I can certainly have a look for materials to help you out with this.
Could you send me a few more details- are you looking for resources to share with your patients as well as literature to inform yourself? I can find some on both subjects that you should be able to put into a patient leaflet.
Best wishes…”
Clarification received from requester
Dear …
Thank you so much for picking up on this. In our experience children between about 12 months of age to about 4-5 years can get quite anxious coming up to vaccination and I wondered if there is an information leaflet I can make available to parents ahead of vaccination.
I guess also the behaviour of doctor/nurse may well be influential on how children behave. Interestingly one of our nurses has developed quite a rapid, matter of fact, flow of patter that continues right up to the point (and after) the needles goes in! It was almost like a conjurer's distraction rather than 'reasoning and explaining ' to the child seemed to work for her…
So information for family/patient and also for clinician to improve our technique…”
Response from librarian
Dear…
Please see attached for your evidence search.
As well as a couple of general guidelines, I’ve tried to add resources that you can pick and choose relevant points from to make your own leaflet, and they’re all free, so you can share them staff/parents etc without any access issues.
I hope you find this helpful, please let me know if you need anything else.
Best wishes…
Patient questions
Example 1
Request received in-person from a member of staff at a library induction session
Dear…
Good to see you at the training session today. As promised, please find below some useful links to help with your inquisitive patient’s query on: “different types of cancer and their treatment (including drugs and their side effects)”.
The NHS website’s overview page on cancer links to specific types and also treatments.
Types of Cancer from Cancer Research UK – this again lists by types and allows further exploration by clicking the links within.
Types or Cancer from Patient.info provides another useful list of categories and includes a video along with good entry-level information.
Our staff have access to the clinical decision support tools Dynamed, UpToDate, and BMJ Best Practice too, these all contain extensive entries on each individual type of cancer, and its current treatments (including side effects of drugs etc):
- for example, here is the Dynamed entry on “Breast Cancer in women”
- here is the UpToDate entry on “Overview of the initial treatment and prognosis of lung cancer”
- and here is the BMJ Best Practice entry on “Stomach cancer”
Each of these entries has an “information for patients” (section you can send-on or adapt for your patient. UpToDate has two tiers of information for patients so you could forward them the basic or expert information as you prefer.
You can access Dynamed and UpToDate from Barts Health Trust PCs without logging-in, via the intranet homepage: if you scroll to the bottom of the page there is a carousel of links, scroll it to the right and you will see the links to Dynamed and UpToDate. If you’re not on a Trust-network PC then you will need to log-in using your NHS Athens username and password to access these tools. You can register for an NHS Athens account here (just make sure you give your nhs.net email address).
Knowledge and Library Services also provides a LibGuide on Cancer: a webpage we’ve created that gathers up all the resources we have on cancer. You’ll need an NHS Athens account to access most of these (let me know if you have any problems accessing this or anything else). This links out to the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence’s national guidelines on the treatment of cancer, as well as charities and other organisations for specific types of cancer, all rich in resources and information for patients.
Hope this helps, get in touch if you’d like more information and I’ll be happy to help.
Quality improvement
Example 1
“Quality Improvement projects regarding deconditioning or reconditioning in hospitals.”
Example 2
“Quality Improvement training for managers and leaders.”
Research or writing for publication
Example 1
"I'm looking into atraumatic shoulder inhury and particularly the management to exploer latest practices, i.e. surgery or non-operative management and the outcome."
Response from librarian:
“Dear Dr [...],
Please find attached the results of your requested search on: "Atraumatic shoulder instability..." Results in each section are arranged in reverse chronological order by year, then alphabetically within years.
If you have any questions about the search strategy employed, or the search results, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
You can access the full text of articles in the attached report by clicking the hyperlinks and signing-in with your NHS OpenAthens username/password if prompted. If you do not currently have an OpenAthens account you can register for one using your NHS email address (you will be emailed to set your own password) or contact us at [email protected] for help.
The articles we do not have direct access to can be ordered through our inter-library loans service (these may take a few days to arrive). To make article requests, please contact us at the address below or call us.
Please let us know what impact the results of this search have had using the feedback form on the KnowledgeShare website (no login required). Evidence of impact is vital for the continuation of this service...”
Service change, guideline or policy
Example 1
“Music for patients during their coronary angiography procedure to help reduce anxiety."
Example 2
“Service change example - health inequalities within the local long covid population" (Update - August).
Example 3
“Reasonable adjustments made in the NHS.".
Systematic reviews
Example 1
Search for Systematic Review on “Identifying the risk of seeding to the abdominal wall when placing PEGs in head and neck cancer patients search strategy”.
Librarian’s narrative description/explanation of search strategy.
Search methods for identification of studies
Searches were developed and carried out by an Evidence and Knowledge Specialist on:
- MEDLINE
- Embase and Emcare via Ovid,
- Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health (CINAHL) via EBSCO
- Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Cochrane Clinical Answers
- Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials in The Cochrane Library
- Turning Research into Practice (Trip)
- ClinicalTrials.gov
- WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform
Studies were restricted to studies published in English language and no publication status restrictions were applied.
The search was developed using a combination of database-specific indexing and free text terms for head and neck cancer and percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy (PEG) and seeding.
The search terms were derived from internal discussions, examining the free text and indexing terms of relevant studies and PubMed Reminer.
The results were de-duplicated and managed using RefWorks reference management software. See Supplementary material/ appendix for the complete search strategy.
The protocol for this review was registered on PROSPERO (reference).”
Search strategies
The search steps included in the strategy for each database are included. For example:
Ovid MEDLINE(R) ALL 1946 to June 30, 2022:
1 "Head and Neck Neoplasms"/ 61645
[I didn’t explode this term as it would have included thyroid and parathyroid which the reviewer said is not considered ‘head and neck cancer’ in the UK]
2 "Squamous cell carcinoma of head and neck"/ 9431
3 exp mouth neoplasms/ 74575
4 exp otorhinolaryngologic neoplasms/ 93745
5 exp Odontogenic Tumors/ 8492 ...
Total pre-duplication: 1538
Total post-duplication: 1029
Teaching or presentations
Example 1
Request received via KnoweldgeShare
“Multiple sclerosis - impact of respiratory function on swallowing and choking risk.”
Response from librarian
“Please find attached the results from your requested search on: "Multiple sclerosis - impact of respiratory function on swallowing and choking risk" [10-ish results, from the last 5 years, in English, featuring adult populations].
I regret that a very sensitive search on this topic in the Medline database and other sources returned only 1 relevant-seeming result featuring all 3 specified elements of MS and respiratory function and dyspahgia/swallowing/choking risk/aspiration: "The relationship between dysphagia, respiratory functions and anthropometry in patients with multiple sclerosis" (its abstract is included in the attached report, let me know if you'd like us to source the full text).
I broadened the scope of the search to include any and all records featuring the 2 elements of Multiple sclerosis and dyspahgia/swallowing/choking risk/aspiration more widely, and return results from a set of 84 Medline records, and 161 secondary-evidence Trip Database records (let me know if you'd like to see the full yield of the search).
Most of these don't seem entirely on-the-money to me. Would you expect so few results? I thought there may be slim pickings but still expected more than this. Do please let me know if you're aware of anything that my search did not retrieve and I can use that information to improve the strategy and go again. I could also look further back than 2018 if you like.
If you have any questions about the search or search results do not hesitate to get in touch.
You can access the full text of articles in the attached report by clicking the hyperlinks and signing-in with your NHS OpenAthens username/password. If you do not currently have an OpenAthens account you can register for one using your NHS email address at: https://openathens.nice.org.uk (you will be emailed to set your own password) or contact us at [...]
The articles we do not have direct access to can be ordered through our inter-library loans service (these may take a few days to arrive). To make article requests, please contact us at the address above.
Please let us know what impact the results of this search have had using the [online feedback form] on the KnowledgeShare website (no login required). Evidence of impact is vital for the continuation of this service...”
Example 2
“Radiopaque resin infiltrant” search for teaching/presentation.
Templates-for/examples-of email correspondence
Widening a search
When you are not finding anything and are considering widening the search’s focus:
“Dear …
I am currently conducting the evidence search you requested on cancellations in nasal fracture surgery, and have not been able to find any papers matching the specifications you gave. Does this sound about right? If you know of any papers which match what you are looking for please let me know and I can use them to base the search around. Or alternatively we might have to broaden the search criteria out a bit, perhaps to other types of surgery which examine the effects of cancellations more generally.
Please do let me know how you wish to proceed.
Best wishes… “
Narrowing a search
When you are finding too much and are considering narrowing the search’s focus:
“Dear …
I am currently conducting the evidence search you requested on “frailty and cardiac surgery”, and I’m finding a lot of papers (several hundred). Would you like me to limit the search to retrieve only review articles and other secondary evidence, in order to make the yield more manageable?
Alternatively would you like to me narrow the search criteria to a particular facet of frailty and cardiac surgery, like morbidity/mortality?
Are you interested in a particular population age (i.e., frail elderly)? Would you like to add a date range and/or geographic limit to the search (i.e., UK-based studies from the last 10 years)?
If you would like to keep the search as broad as possible then let me know and I will continue on, populating a Mendeley library with your results.
Please do let me know how you wish to proceed.
Best wishes… “
Evidence searching process map
This process map was created by Sarah Rudd and colleagues at North Bristol NHS Trust to capture the process of the administration of an evidence search from receiving the request to the results being sent to the user.
The process map is not designed to include the actual search(es) itself, as this is covered elsewhere. Please contact Sarah Rudd [email protected] for more information.
Spreadsheet to help develop and record a systematic review search strategy
This is available in the following versions:
Andra Fry, Information Specialist at LSE Library, has kindly shared the following template of a spreadsheet used to devise and record a systematic review’s search strategy, as well as a completed example of the spreadsheet.
Please contact Andra at [email protected] if you have any questions.
Version history
This is version 1.3, released in May 2024.
This version removed examples from before NICE Evidence Services’ decommissioning in March 2022, and replaced them with more current examples...
Version 1.2, published in November 2023, is now archived.