Module 2. Information Retrieval

You used an electronic index, a guideline index, and a web search engine to retrieve information relevant to your clinical problem. Compare and contrast your results. Which resources were useful/ not useful for your information retrieval task, and why? Identify some alternative strategies for retrieving relevant information - would context relevant information retrieval be useful?

The electronic index, PubMed, allowed me to search through a multitude of health care sources. It provided a framework from which to focus my academic search with precision unlike the web search engine, Google Scholar. My Google search produced some of the same articles by using similar keywords, but my access to the full text of those articles was limited outside of the university library system. The fact that many of these sites require individual fees or memberships severely limits the distribution of this information to the general public. The Google search provided a potentially useful divergence into peripheral areas of interest. In a comprehensive search, these leads could provide relevant information. The Little Hearts, Inc. support group website, for example, could prove to be a valuable resource for the provider as well as their clients. My topic of choice, heart failure, was prevalent enough to have an entry in the National Guideline Clearinghouse. This document provided definitions in addition to recommended and ranked treatment options. This will be a beneficial future reference. There is so much information readily available. The knowledge of where and how to search will facilitate systematic searches.