Expert search and support
Searching and support for the provider interfaces.
This covers searching and support for the Ovid, EBSCO and ProQuest bibliographic databases using the provider interfaces, as well as for Trip Pro and the Cochrane Library.
Database providers
What's available?
CINAHL covers nursing and allied health.
MEDLINE covers medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and more.
Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection covers emotional and behavioral characteristics, psychiatry, psychology, mental processes, anthropology, and observational and experimental methods.
Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA)) covers all aspects of librarianship.
GreenFILE covers all aspects of human impact to the environment.
Where can I find support materials for provider interfaces?
Videos and live session bookings
A recording of a basic session is available. Book a live session.
A recording of an advanced session is available. Book a live session.
Find out more about EBSCO's training and support offer.
What's available?
Embase (Excerpta Medica Database) covers biomedical sciences and pharmacology.
Emcare covers nursing specialties and the nursing healthcare professions.
Health Management Information Consortium (HMIC).
MEDLINE covers medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and more.
Social Policy and Practice covers evidence-based social science research.
Where can I find support materials for provider interfaces?
Ovid Tools and Resources Portal - click on “Instructor led training” from the menu on the left on this page for free 1-to-1 or small group training from Ovid staff, tailored to your requirements.
Videos and live session bookings
See the Ovid NHS Resource Centre for Basic and Advanced Ovid recordings. See under 'Recorded Sessions'.
Request specific topics of training from Ovid trainers at Ovid Coaching.
Find out more about the Ovid support offer.
What's available?
Allied and Complementary Medicine Database (AMED) covers complementary medicine, palliative care, and several professions allied to medicine.
British Nursing Index covers nursing and the nursing healthcare professions in the UK.
Health Research Premium Collection provides full text journal titles in healthcare.
Medline covers medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and more.
PsycArticles (APA) - full text journal articles in the field of psychology, including material from 1894 to the present.
PsycINFO references journal articles, books and dissertations in the field of psychology.
PTSDpubs covers traumatic stress.
Where can I find support materials for provider interfaces?
How to search ProQuest Academic.
How to search ProQuest Dialog.
Videos and live session bookings
ProQuest Basic: see more information; a recording and booking onto a live session.
ProQuest Advanced: see more information; a recording and booking onto a live session.
Trip was designed, twenty-five years ago, as a tool to support clinicians to answer their clinical questions using the best available evidence. This focus remains and a major feature of Trip is evidence-based content (with a focus on evidence at the top of the evidence pyramid). While the focus is on clinicians, Trip is widely used by librarians and other information specialists.
Trip uses colour-coding to highlight the evidence type and the highest quality content is marked in green. This is subdivided in to a number of categories:
- systematic Reviews – these are taken from a large number of sources both published and grey giving unrivalled coverage and include HTAs
- evidence based synopses – covering journal clubs, critically appraised topics and other articles, while not formal systematic reviews, that have undergone additional secondary review
- guidelines – Trip’s guidelines are global in nature but can be restricted to specific areas (e.g. UK, Canada) at the touch of a button. No resource has the diversity and breadth of guideline coverage
- regulatory guidance – This covers content from the likes of NICE Technology Appraisals and national drug approvals such as the FDA, EMA and SMC
Trip is constantly looking for new sources of clinically useful information, typically adding 5-10 new sources per month. Users are encouraged to alert Trip to new sources to ensure the site uses the best evidence in the search.
An important aspect of Trip is understanding how we order the results. This includes three main components:
- Text score – simplistically, a document scores more highly if the search terms are in the document title as opposed to the body of the text. If two documents contain the search terms once in the body of the text, a longer document will score lower due to a reduced term density.
- Date – the newer the document the more highly it scores.
- Publication score – this is given to an individual publisher and reflects the perceived place in the evidence pyramid. So, NICE or Cochrane (say) have a higher score than a journal such as the BMJ and that scores more highly than a ‘lesser’ journal.
These scores are calculated ‘on the fly’ and the highest scoring document appears at the top of the results.
One final issue to raise, is full-text content. Around 70% of journal articles link out to full-text articles (for Pro users only). In addition to this Trip seamlessly integrates with LibKey which can boost the proportion of full-text articles, depending on the organisational subscriptions.
Trip is IP authenticated as well as via NHS OpenAthens. To set up IP access contact Jon Brassey, quoting the IP address(es) of your organisation.
The Cochrane Library is a collection of databases giving practitioners access to evidence-based information to improve patient care. It includes:
- Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
- Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL)
- Cochrane Clinical Answers
What's available?
CINAHL covers nursing and allied health.
MEDLINE covers medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and more.
Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection covers emotional and behavioral characteristics, psychiatry, psychology, mental processes, anthropology, and observational and experimental methods.
Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA)) covers all aspects of librarianship.
GreenFILE covers all aspects of human impact to the environment.
Where can I find support materials for provider interfaces?
Videos and live session bookings
A recording of a basic session is available. Book a live session.
A recording of an advanced session is available. Book a live session.
Find out more about EBSCO's training and support offer.
What's available?
Embase (Excerpta Medica Database) covers biomedical sciences and pharmacology.
Emcare covers nursing specialties and the nursing healthcare professions.
Health Management Information Consortium (HMIC).
MEDLINE covers medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and more.
Social Policy and Practice covers evidence-based social science research.
Where can I find support materials for provider interfaces?
Ovid Tools and Resources Portal - click on “Instructor led training” from the menu on the left on this page for free 1-to-1 or small group training from Ovid staff, tailored to your requirements.
Videos and live session bookings
See the Ovid NHS Resource Centre for Basic and Advanced Ovid recordings. See under 'Recorded Sessions'.
Request specific topics of training from Ovid trainers at Ovid Coaching.
Find out more about the Ovid support offer.
What's available?
Allied and Complementary Medicine Database (AMED) covers complementary medicine, palliative care, and several professions allied to medicine.
British Nursing Index covers nursing and the nursing healthcare professions in the UK.
Health Research Premium Collection provides full text journal titles in healthcare.
Medline covers medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and more.
PsycArticles (APA) - full text journal articles in the field of psychology, including material from 1894 to the present.
PsycINFO references journal articles, books and dissertations in the field of psychology.
PTSDpubs covers traumatic stress.
Where can I find support materials for provider interfaces?
How to search ProQuest Academic.
How to search ProQuest Dialog.
Videos and live session bookings
ProQuest Basic: see more information; a recording and booking onto a live session.
ProQuest Advanced: see more information; a recording and booking onto a live session.
Trip was designed, twenty-five years ago, as a tool to support clinicians to answer their clinical questions using the best available evidence. This focus remains and a major feature of Trip is evidence-based content (with a focus on evidence at the top of the evidence pyramid). While the focus is on clinicians, Trip is widely used by librarians and other information specialists.
Trip uses colour-coding to highlight the evidence type and the highest quality content is marked in green. This is subdivided in to a number of categories:
- systematic Reviews – these are taken from a large number of sources both published and grey giving unrivalled coverage and include HTAs
- evidence based synopses – covering journal clubs, critically appraised topics and other articles, while not formal systematic reviews, that have undergone additional secondary review
- guidelines – Trip’s guidelines are global in nature but can be restricted to specific areas (e.g. UK, Canada) at the touch of a button. No resource has the diversity and breadth of guideline coverage
- regulatory guidance – This covers content from the likes of NICE Technology Appraisals and national drug approvals such as the FDA, EMA and SMC
Trip is constantly looking for new sources of clinically useful information, typically adding 5-10 new sources per month. Users are encouraged to alert Trip to new sources to ensure the site uses the best evidence in the search.
An important aspect of Trip is understanding how we order the results. This includes three main components:
- Text score – simplistically, a document scores more highly if the search terms are in the document title as opposed to the body of the text. If two documents contain the search terms once in the body of the text, a longer document will score lower due to a reduced term density.
- Date – the newer the document the more highly it scores.
- Publication score – this is given to an individual publisher and reflects the perceived place in the evidence pyramid. So, NICE or Cochrane (say) have a higher score than a journal such as the BMJ and that scores more highly than a ‘lesser’ journal.
These scores are calculated ‘on the fly’ and the highest scoring document appears at the top of the results.
One final issue to raise, is full-text content. Around 70% of journal articles link out to full-text articles (for Pro users only). In addition to this Trip seamlessly integrates with LibKey which can boost the proportion of full-text articles, depending on the organisational subscriptions.
Trip is IP authenticated as well as via NHS OpenAthens. To set up IP access contact Jon Brassey, quoting the IP address(es) of your organisation.
The Cochrane Library is a collection of databases giving practitioners access to evidence-based information to improve patient care. It includes:
- Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
- Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL)
- Cochrane Clinical Answers
Expert search training for NHS knowledge and library service staff
These sessions are 90 minutes long and are delivered by trainers who regularly use provider interfaces to carry out evidence searches.
They use real-life complex search examples, follow a search process from start to finish, provide examples of best practice as well as hints, tips and shortcuts.
These sessions are aimed at KLS staff who regularly carry out literature searches. They were trialled during the early adopter pilot and were very well received by participants.
The April, May and June sessions of this training are now available. Find out dates and book a place on this expert search training.
STEP elearning modules
If you’re a member of KLS staff who is new to searching as well as new to provider interfaces, then we recommend that you have a look at the training resources below.
A suite of seven bite-sized e-learning modules on ‘how to search the literature effectively’.
Select a module, click ‘play’ and then ‘continue’.
HEE has funded their development.
Library Knowledge Services (North)
LIHNN’s Literature Searching Modules.
Tools for advanced searchers
These are freely available tools that searchers may find useful.
SR-Accelerator is a suite of tools from Bond University to help speed up the systematic review process.
It includes Polyglot, which translates search strings across databases.
Library of Search Strategy Resources - for anyone sourcing and developing search strategies for healthcare topics.
UX Caucus Database Tips - bite-size tips for expert searchers on how to search more efficiently.
Peer support
There are a variety of activities available to enable KLS staff to support each other as they become familiar with a new way of evidence searching.
These will be regularly updated, and the current opportunities will be listed.
STEP elearning modules
STEP modules can also help library services:
- extend training to more staff
- save time spent on developing e-learning and delivering face-to-face training
Links to the modules, or the animations within them, may be placed on library websites.
Modules are ideal for including in local blended learning.
Template slide deck
A group of KLS staff have created a template slide deck which you can tailor for use in local training sessions. The resource includes:
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general principles
-
pointers to resources for different searchers and search types
-
key functionality for all three platforms
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information about managing references and search results
If you have any comments or suggestions about improving the slides, or new tools for advanced searchers or peer support activities, email the Knowledge for Healthcare team on [email protected].
Page last reviewed: 1 August 2023