LibGuides: Equity in System Sciences Resources for Cases: Clinical Resources

Overview of Synthesized Resources

We have several tools for answering clinical questions and no one tool will be the perfect tool 100% of the time. Given how quickly clinical information gets updated or changed, it is important to be familiar with various tools.

Up to Date
An encyclopedia type of resource for clinically-focused topics.
Cochrane Library
Great for seeing if there is a high quality systematic review on your topic.
Medscape
A point-of-care clinical reference featuring up to date, searchable, peer-reviewed medical articles organized in specialty-focused topics. Authors are identified with their current faculty appointments and each article is updated yearly. It often has great images.

A personal - free - subscription is required. (They won't spam your email address.)
Micromedex
Not only drug info (and approved by UCSD Health) but disease information by IBM Watson.

hold for U2D search box

Thinking Through your Search

A clinical question is one that asks for specific information in order to make a clinical decision. It is important to think through a good clinical question because it can help direct you to resources, identify the best terms to search with, and can help you decide upon an appropriate article. A helpful mnemonic is PICO:

P: Patient, problem, (or even population)
I: Intervention
C: Comparison (to the intervention - not always a component)
O: Outcome

For example, if you have a diabetic patient, there may be a number of factors that are pertinent that you need to take into account. For example: How old are they? What are they currently dealing with - a new diagnosis for another condition? Is it a new complication to the diabetes? How do you intend to treat or diagnose the problem? Are there 2 options and you need to find the best one? What are you hoping to achieve or avoid with the intervention? Has the patient expressed her's or his' desire about treatment or a specific outcome? All of these factors may influence a good, answerable clnical question.

It is important to take a minute to figure out your search strategy and initial keywords. Using PICO as a frame-work, it will help you identify your key terms to use plus remind you of important factors to keep in mind when evaluating the resources.

Synthesized Lit, Systematic Reviews, & More

If the synthesized resources above do not cover your topic or give you enough details on your topic, using a database that lets you find systematized reviews or the original research might be your best option.

PubMed
Covers over 5,600 journals in the biomedical and health sciences, and has over 26 million citations with an archive of articles going back to the late 1940's. See UC San Diego Libraries PubMed page for more details.
PsycINFO
Search over 200 years of international literature on the fields of psychology, cognitive science, and related disciplines. Search through articles, books, book chapters or dissertations. Also a great resource for items about the psychological and behavioral aspects of medicine and health.
Web of Science
A great cross-disciplinary database that has 12,000+ journals in all subjects, with a heavy emphasis in the sciences. There is some overlap with PubMed content, but there are also unique items here, too. For each record, you can view what the authors cited and who has since cited the article.
Cochrane Library: Find Systematic Reviews
Cochrane systematic reviews are the gold standard for their methodology and comprehensivity.
Trip Database: Clinical Search Engine
Find journal articles (similar to PubMed), systematic reviews, clinical guidelines, Cochrane Library resources (i.e., Systematic Reviews), and more through this clinical search engine. It will help you search across multiple resources all at once.

DDX Tools or Lab Text Resources?

Don't forget we have tools to help you with the differential diagnosis or finding more information about lab texts (see the Background Information Resources tab).