In this module, I was searching for information on the pharmacological treatment of depression. I used the CINAHL database, Google search engine, and also looked at the National Guideline Clearinghouse website to investigate this topic. I found a plethora of information between the three. By far, Google turned up the most information, with thousands upon thousands of websites coming up. I found Google very easy to use, and was able to narrow down the search by putting in more specific keywords when searching. Although there were a lot of results that came up, many of them were not evidence-based sites and were based on people's personal experiences with depression. While that is interesting, I did not find it as helpful for what I was searching for. However, I think Google can be a good tool when searching general topics to get an overview.
I also found some relevant information on the national guidelines clearinghouse website. I was not familiar with this website, and did have to search around for a while to find what I was looking for. I was looking for specific information on what type of antidepressant medication would be most helpful for a new diagnosis of depression, and while this website did have information on the treatment of depression, it did not give me specific information regarding what medications to choose first. I did bookmark this website though and will keep it mind to use in the future.
Finally, I used the CINAHL database through the university library homepage. I found the CINAHL database to be easy to use and liked that I could put specifiers on the search, to only bring up peer reviewed articles. I also had many results with CINAHL, with some results being more applicable than others. It did bring up specific articles on antidepressant medications. I think that CINAHL would be my choice out of the three when looking for evidence based information. The Cochrane Library would also have been a good choice, although I tried not to use this one, since I am familiar with it. Overall, this module was a good reminder of all the different places that we can look for information and how technology and databases can help us to find information on evidence-based practice.
Like you Stephanie, I found CINAHL to be very useful and easy to use as well as a good resource for evidence-based research. It took me hours to familiarize myself with the strategies in doing a search to find relevant results but it was very worthwhile.
ReplyDeleteIt is good to see that the NGC was helpful. Often you can't find exactly what you are looking for, but when you can, it is usually very helpful and worth the look.
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