Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Module 3

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?

The clinical problem that I decided to research was maternal use of SSRI’s and the effect on the neonate.  To begin, I did a google search which yielded no results.  I reworded my search to maternal use of antidepressants, this time I got only a handful of useful results but mostly it just brought up ads for different kinds of antidepressants. 
Next I searched the national guideline clearing house.  I found this method of retrieval difficult to use and never could find any results specifically aimed at my clinical problem. I was able to find information on the use of antidepressants but nothing in regards to their effect on the neonate when taken during pregnancy.
Lastly, I conducted a search on Endnote x4.  Using the World of Science and the Pubmed search data bases, I found over 200 publications that were relevant to my clinical problem. Needless to say, I found Endnote to be the most helpful way for me to search and obtain relevant information.  In Endnote, I am also able to organize my information by author or date.  It also allows me to make a file specifically for this particular search. 
I can see that each of these retrieval methods have their own strengths but for up to date professional research, I found Endnote to be the most helpful. 





No comments:

Post a Comment