8B: How to Find Evidence
Once you have identified an area or question (e.g. how best to manage a venous leg ulcer), there are a number of organisations and websites where you can find evidence based guidelines or consensus statements related to wound assessment, management and prevention. Many of these sites provide direct links to evidence based guidelines which can be freely downloaded for your reference.
It is useful to be clear about the topic you are searching for information on, so that you can enter two or three search terms (e.g. "venous leg ulcer", treatment) in the search boxes in these sites. Some useful searching tips are to:
- try a similar or a broader term if your first search doesn’t retrieve any results
- double check for spelling or try truncation (QUT Library’s online information literacy tutorial explains how to search successfully in Module 2. Identify and obtain information)
- use MeSH terms (i.e. refer to http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/)
- check for the search term in the abstract or title, rather than in the full text if you have too many results.
Some useful websites for evidence on wound care
Refer to the Links page for sites that are particularly useful for locating evidence based guidelines on wound management.
Once you have found the evidence related to your clinical problem or question, the next section provides examples of how to put the evidence into practice.
