Searching for evidence in perioperative nursing

Area of Science:

• Nursing Research
• Evidence-Based Practice
• Information Retrieval

Background:

• Perioperative nurses need to access high-quality clinical research for evidence-based practice.
• Identifying and retrieving relevant studies is crucial for informed clinical decision-making.

Purpose of the Study:

• To outline principles for formulating clinical questions.
• To guide the selection of appropriate databases for literature searches.
• To present strategies for pre-planning effective search queries.

Main Methods:

• Discusses the PICO (Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome) framework for question development.
• Highlights key features of major biomedical databases.
• Explains the importance of Boolean operators and keywords in search strategy.

Main Results:

• Provides a systematic approach to literature searching.
• Emphasizes the need for a well-defined search strategy.
• Aims to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of retrieving research evidence.

Conclusions:

• Effective search strategies are essential for perioperative nurses.
• Proper question formulation and database selection enhance evidence retrieval.
• Pre-planning search queries leads to more targeted and relevant results.