| RESEARCH AT WANSFORD SURGERY |
Course information - GCP and the EU directive in primary care (Durham and Preston course handouts)
NHS
Primary care perspective lecture SEpt 2007- powerpoint
handout
|
| Research nurse post |
DR TAKHAR - MSC thesis |
| Critical
appraisal checklist |
| Clinical
Research and Good Clinical Practice Dictionary |
| Useful links for researchers: |
| Literature searching |
Search tools on the web |
| Finding medical journals on the web |
Reviewing the literature |
| Funding sources |
Writing the grant application |
| Applying for ethical approval; |
Further information and
advice |
Literature searching
The Cochrane collaboration provide a comprehensive handbook
about the art of systematic literature searching and appraisal.
This link leads to Chapter
5 - 'Locating and selecting studies'. In fact if you
have the time it is worth browsing through the entire
handbook
A
guide to literature searching
Provided by the RDSU, University of Bath. This page lists
the medical literature databases available and provides
some hints about search strategies.
The
BMJ guide to MEDLINE
An editorial from the British Medical Journal explaining
how to get the most out of the most comprehensive medical
database, MEDLINE |
Searching
Medical Journals
Free
MEDLINE Also includes AIDSLINE, CANCERLIT, HSRPROJ
and other databases. Choose from nine sites offering
free access to MEDLINE. However be careful, these sites
differ in the years they cover, the regularity with
which they are updated and the speed at which they run.
Try a few before deciding which is best for you.
BIDS
EMBASE provides an alternative to MEDLINE and contains
some articles not held on MEDLINE. For a rigorous literature
search both EMBASE and MEDLINE need to be used. A
username and password are required in order to use
BIDS
The BIDS
ISI database offers an alternative method of searching
- citation searching. Therefore you can identify any
journal article which has cited an important reference
in your field of interest. BIDS ISI also has information
on conference proceedings.Again a username and password
are required.
The British
Nursing Index contains references to over 220 nursing
and allied health journals (from 1994 onwards).
A subscription is required to access this index
on the web
CINAHL database
contains references relating to nursing and allied health
professions. Access to CINAHL is limited to subscribers.
Check with your local NHS
librarian to check if you have access under NHS
agreements |
Searching
for existing reviews
Much time and effort spent searching for references
can be saved by identifying reviews which already exist
in your field of interest. The following sites could
save you hours.
The
Cochrane library provide free access to abstracts
of all the systematic reviews they have conducted. A
subscription is required for the full text of these
reviews (check with your medical library).
NHS
Centre for Reviews and Dissemination Includes the
Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness (DARE),
the NHS Economic Evaluation Database (NEED) and the
HTA database.
Bandolier
A monthly journal produced in Oxford for the NHS R&D
Directorate. Bullet point summaries of recently published
important papers in the medical literature.
Effective
Health Care Bulletins bi-monthly bulletin for decision
makers which reviews the effectiveness of a variety
of health care interventions.
OR do a quick search of all four of the above and more
using
Gwent's Taking
Research Into Practice search engine.
Netting
the evidence ( Sheffield)
University
of Cambridge Public Health Page |
Critical appraisal
the Cochrane collaboration's handbook
is useful, particularly Chapter
6 - Critical Appraisal of Studies.
Also, for more specific issues, the BMJ have published
a series of papers which are designed to help you critically
assess the relevance and quality of the information
which you have found.
How to read a paper: Getting your bearings (deciding
what the paper is about)
How to read a paper: Assessing the methodological quality
of published papers
How to read a paper: Statistics for the non-statistician
How to read a paper: Statistics for the non-statistician.
II: "Significant" relations and their pitfalls
How to read a paper: Papers that report drug trials
How to read a paper: Papers that report diagnostic or
screening tests
How to read a paper: Papers that tell you what things
cost (economic analyses)
How to read a paper: Papers that summarise other papers
(systematic reviews and meta-analyses)
How to read a paper: Papers that go beyond numbers (qualitative
research) |
Funding sources
The following is a list of the major sources of medical
research funding on the internet. Some of them only
provide an address for further information, others provide
much more detail about the type of projects funded,
deadlines, application forms etc.
Medical Research Council
The Wellcome Trust
The Association of
Medical Research Charities, UK
Economic and Social
Research Council
If you don't know which funding body to target, search
RD Funding database
(A new database which lists funding schemes by the deadline
date.) |
Writing the grant application
Hints on writing a research
application |
Getting ethical approval
Most medical research projects require ethical approval
before they can proceed
In most areas of the UK, this means applying to an ethics
committee
- Multicentre research ethics committee - for studies
involving 5 or more centres.
- Local research ethics committee - for studies with
fewer than 5 centres.
The Multicentre committees (MRECs) have
a web page explaining the application procedure
and providing application forms to download.
Peterborough
and Fenland LREC
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