Search Tips
Use Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT to combine search terms.

Remember to put "quotes" around search phrases (ex: "ear infection").

And use the * or ? as your truncation/wildcard symbols (ex: "ear infection*" finds ear infection or ear infections; randomi?ed finds randomised or randomized).


Free Sources of Evidence - Guidelines
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) - EPC Evidence Reports and Clinical Practice Guidelines.  Guidelines limited from 1992-1996.  Search National Guideline Clearinghouse for recent guidelines. 


Canadian Medical Association (CMA) - Clinical Practice Guidelines


Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) -
Click on the link to Diseases & Conditions. Make selection from A-Z Index then scan pages for links to related guidelines.


Guidelines International Network (GIN) -
Links to guidelines from around the world.


National Guidelines Clearinghouse (NGC) -
Click on the Treatment/Intervention link on the left-side under the Browse heading. 


National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) - Clinical Guidelines
According to their website, "NICE is an independent organisation responsible for providing national guidance on promoting good health and preventing and treating ill health."  NICE is based in the UK.


Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario (RNAO) - Nursing Best Practice Guidelines
According to their website, "The purpose of this multi-year program is to support Ontario Nurses by providing them with Best Practice Guidelines for client care. There are currently 29 published guidelines as well as a Toolkit and Educator's Resource to support implementation."


Other Free Sources of Evidence
PubMed Central - Clinical Queries 
Click on the Clinical Queries link on the left-side under the PubMed Services heading. 



Subscription Sources of Evidence
The Cochrane Collaboration/The Cochrane Library - Database of Systematic Reviews and DARE, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects. 
Full-text access limited to subscribers or those with country-wide access.  Click Cochrane Reviews on the left-side to browse free systematic review summaries.   

According to their website, "The Cochrane Library is a collection of databases that contain high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making. Cochrane reviews represent the highest level of evidence on which to base clinical treatment decisions. In addition to Cochrane reviews, The Cochrane Library provides other sources of reliable information: other systematic review abstracts, technology assessments, economic evaluations, and individual clinical trials – all the current evidence in one single environment." 

Also, "DARE is the only database to contain abstracts of systematic reviews that have been quality-assessed. Each abstract includes a summary of the review together with a critical commentary about the overall quality.  The database is a key resource for busy decision makers and can be used for answering questions about the effects of specific interventions, whether such questions arise from practice or when making policy. DARE covers a broad range of health related interventions and includes over 3000 abstracts of reviews in fields as diverse as diagnostic tests, public health, health promotion, pharmacology, surgery, psychology and the organization and delivery of health care."

Click here for PUC student/faculty access. 


InfoPoems -
Full-text access limited to subscribers.

According to their website, "POEM stands for Patient-Oriented Evidence that Matters™.  POEMs have to meet three criteria; they address a question that we face as clinicians, they measure outcomes that we and our patients care about: symptoms, morbidity, quality of life, and mortality, they have the potential to change the way we practice."


The Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) - Systematic Review Database
Full-text access limited to subscribers.  Click on EBP Resources and Services then Best Practice Information Sheet Database or JBI Systematic Review Database.

According to their website, "Our role is to identify feasible, appropriate, meaningful and effective health care practices and health care outcomes by facilitating international collaboration between collaborating centres, groups and expert researchers, clinicians and members of the institute through; Developing methods to appraise and synthesise evidence, conducting systematic reviews and analyses of the research literature (evidence translation); Globally disseminating information in diverse formats to inform health systems, health professionals and consumers (evidence transfer); Facilitating the effective implementation of evidence and the evaluation of its impact on health care practice (evidence utilisation); Contributing to clinical cost effective health care through the promotion of evidence based health care practice (evidence utilisation)."

Up-To-Date -
Full-text access limited to subscribers.

According to their website, “UpToDate is a comprehensive evidence-based clinical information resource available to clinicians on the Web, desktop, and PDA. UpToDate is designed to get clinicians the concise, practical answers they need when they need them the most - at the point-of-care.  Our topics are written exclusively for UpToDate by clinicians for clinicians - more than 3,300 clinicians serve as authors. Our content is comprehensive yet concise and it's fully referenced. It goes through an extensive peer review process to ensure that the information and recommendations you access from our service are accurate and reliable.”


Primary Sources of Evidence
CINAHL -
Full-text access limited to subscribers.

According to their website, "The CINAHL® database includes citations from 2,593 journals of which are currently indexed. Some journals have ceased publication, changed names or are no longer indexed in the database. Of the 2,593 journals indexed, 1,798 include author abstracts. Journals cover nursing, allied health, biomedicine, alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health and health sciences librarianship."

Click here for PUC student/faculty access. 


EBSCO Publishing's various databases -
Full-text access limited to subscribers.

According to their website "EBSCO offers an integrated content solution to enhance patient care, improve access to the best available evidence, inform patients, add value to electronic health records and more. With a complete suite of clinical, patient-oriented and administration databases, EBSCO offers the highest quality health solutions including point-of-care synthesized evidence, nursing resources, patient education materials, marketing tools, medical research databases, social work content, and the ability to garner CME and CEU..."

Click here for PUC student/faculty access to Inspire's HealthSource: Nursing/Academic. 


EMBASE -
Full-text access limited to subscribers.

According to their website, "Comprehensive, timely access to pharmacological, biomedical literature; More than 18 million records; 11 million+ EMBASE records from 1974-present and 7 million+ unique MEDLINE records from 1966-present; The most current version of EMBASE available with records online on average within 10 working days; Daily updates with more than 2,000 records added every working day; 600,000+ records added annually; 7,000+ journals from over 70 countries indexed; close to 2,000 more journals than covered by EMBASE or MEDLINE individually."


MEDLINE -
Full-text access limited to subscribers.

According to their website, “MEDLINE® is the United States National Library of Medicine's (NLM®) premier bibliographic database providing information from the following fields: medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, allied health and pre-clinical sciences.  The Ovid MEDLINE database contains bibliographic citations and author abstracts from more than 4,600 biomedical journals published in the United States and in 70 other countries.”

Click here for PUC student/faculty access. 


PubMed Central (PMC) -
Free access but full-text content somewhat limited. 

According to their website, “PubMed is a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine that includes over 17 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles back to the 1950s. PubMed includes links to full text articles and other related resources.”