Getting Started
This guide provides an overview of evidence-based practice (EBP) resources that are relevant to students, educators, and clinicians in the health sciences professions (e.g., medicine and nursing).
Resources include:
- clinical point-of-care tools
- evidence syntheses (e.g., clinical practice guidelines and systematic reviews)
- primary studies, including specialized biomedical databases that enable you to search by study or publication type
- background information (e.g., review articles, core textbooks)
- tools for teaching and learning about the EBP process
What is Evidence-Based Practice?
Evidence-based health care is "the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. Evidence-based clinical practice requires integration of individual clinical expertise and patient preferences with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research and consideration of available resources."
Source: JAMAevidence Glossary
Key EBP Resources
The following list is a small sample of the resources included in this guide. Freely available tools are indicated with an open lock symbol. To access licensed resources while off-campus or using the campus guest wifi network, see Access VPN.
- UpToDate This link opens in a new windowUpToDate is a point-of-care clinical medicine database, providing recommendations across 25 specialties. Integrates drug information (Lexidrug) and clinical images (VisualDx).
Licensed by UCD Health, access is available only to users with HS/Citrix credentials. - PubMed for UC Davis This link opens in a new windowPubMed is a subject index from the National Library of Medicine which includes over 30 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and e-books.
PubMed Tips:
- Although PubMed is freely available, access to many full-text articles is not.
- Use the special PubMed link for UC Davis, which enables "Get it at UC" links to display in search results. "Get it at UC" links will point you to library-licensed full text articles or the request system for articles that are not immediately available online.
- CINAHL Complete: Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature This link opens in a new windowCINAHL is a subject index that provides comprehensive coverage of the English language nursing, pharmacy, allied health, and consumer health literature.
- Cochrane Library This link opens in a new windowThe Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews is an important resource for high-quality systematic reviews in health care, including all reviews and protocols, as well as systematic review methods handbooks prepared by Cochrane Review Groups.
- Joanna Briggs Institute EBP Database (JBI) This link opens in a new windowJoanna Briggs Institute (JBI) EBP Database allows healthcare providers to search across a wide range of summarized and appraised evidence to inform their clinical practice.
- JAMAevidence This link opens in a new windowJAMAevidence provides access to key e-books on how to practice evidence-based medicine and evidence-based practice (EBM, EBP). Also included are EBM tools, such as statistics and methods resources, critical appraisal worksheets, and educator guides.