Research Guides: Nurses of USC: Evidence Reviews & Appraisal Tools

Top Level Evidence & Tools

Pre-appraised summaries synthesize the evidence to present the latest body of knowledge around a test, disease or condition.

AAP Grand Rounds
American Academy of Pediatrics grand rounds offers evidence-based analysis and summaries of current health issues and trends in pediatrics.
American College of Physicians Journal Club
Summarizes the best new evidence for internal medicine from over 120 clinical journals. Use Annals of Internal Medicine Advanced Search and ACP Journal Club filter.

BMJ Best Practice This link opens in a new window
Evidence-based overviews of medical topics, continually updated. BMJ Best Practice incorporates research evidence from its previous publication BMJ Clinical Evidence and adds expert opinion and guidelines to cover diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and prevention.
British Medical Journal (BMJ) is a United Kingdom based company and many of the recommendations for care reflect UK practices and cannot be implemented in the United States' health systems. However, this sources does provide excellent science-based information on etiology, diagnosis, and monitoring for a broad variety of diseases and conditions.
ClinicalKey This link opens in a new window
See the Clinical Overviews for a preappraised topic summary. Also includes ebooks, journals, patient education handouts, drug monographs, images and videos.
Joanna Briggs Institute EBP Database This link opens in a new window
Evidence-based practice database with a global focus. Find systematic reviews, protocols, recommended practices, evidence summaries, best practice and consumer information sheets, and technical Reports.
UpToDate This link opens in a new window
Popular, go-to resource synthesizes evidence with expert opinion. Includes topic monographs, patient education, practice updates, drug interactions, guidelines, and medical calculators. To obtain CME, create a personal profile and log in.

Systematic review databases, or options to limit search results by article type to systematic reviews, are listed below. Also add "systematic review" to a search to find these types of publications. Systematic Reviews also require critical appraisal to rank how well they have been performed and reported.

Annual Reviews
Reviews of medicine, microbiology, neuroscience and many other STEM topics.
Campbell Systematic Reviews
Systematic reviews, plain language summaries, and planned reviews in crime and justice, disability, education, international development, knowledge translation and implementation, nutrition, and social welfare.
Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews provides access to full-text systematic reviews.
Epistemonikos
Epistemonikos is a collaborative, multilingual database of health evidence. Find systematic reviews, evidence summaries, and primary studies. Returns relevant results, but does not include full-text. Copy title and search Google or Pubmed to access.
Joanna Briggs Institute
Evidence-based practice database with a global focus. Run a search and select Systematic Reviews under Publication Types.
PROSPERO
PROSPERO is an international database of prospectively registered systematic reviews in health and social care.
PubMed@USC
Find the Article Type limiter on the left side of the Pubmed search results and choose Systematic Reviews.

The publication databases, worksheets and checklists below are designed to help you identify well-designed research methods, and weaknesses due to bias or methodological flaws. NOTE: Be sure and assess whether the study is Qualitative (or Mixed Methods), and if so use the appropriate appraisal methods/worksheet.

CEBM Critical Appraisal Tools
Critical appraisal worksheets to help you appraise the reliability, importance and applicability of clinical evidence. Worksheets cover Systematic Reviews, RCTs and Qualitative Studies in multiple languages.
Center for Evidence-Based Medicine EBM Tools
Includes a how-to guide on finding evidence, concise tools for NNT, Likelihood Ratios, and more involved information on data extraction and meta-analysis.
Critical Appraisal Skills Program CASP Checklists
The questions in the checklists are designed to help you think about several aspects in a structured way. 1. Are the results of the study valid?; 2. What are the results?; 3. Will the results help locally?; 4. Is the study methodologically sound?
JAMAevidence Critical Appraisal Worksheets
Create and use your MyAccess account to access a number of critical appraisal tools. See also the Education Guides tab for critical appraisal by study type.
JBI Critical Appraisal Tools
Tools and checklists cover not only RCTs but also case reports, cohort studies, economic evaluations and qualitative research.
Johns Hopkins Nursing EBP Tools
The Nurses of USC acknowledges and follows the Johns Hopkins Nursing Evidence Based Practice Model. The linked page includes worksheets used to identify types of research and critically appraise.
Quality Assessment and Risk of Bias Repository
Aims to be a comprehensive repository, a resource for finding and selecting a risk of bias or quality assessment tool for evidence synthesis projects. This project was created and is maintained by Duke University's Medical Center Library & Archives.

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