Author: Marlborough H.S.

Source: Primary Dental Care, Volume 8, Number 3, 1 July 2001 , pp. 117-121(5)

Publisher: Faculty of General Dental Practice (UK)

Abstract:

Research in primary dental care, recertification, continuing professional development, lifelong learning, peer review and quality healthcare are all informed by the published literature. Dental practitioners can find out about reliable and up-to-date information available in the published literature by searching bibliographic databases. Published in two parts, this article describes the databases relevant to clinical dental practice and explains the generic skills required to search them effectively, focusing on MEDLINE, the database most relevant for the majority of dental practitioners, which is freely available via the World Wide Web (WWW). The article differentiates between sensitivity (maximum recall) and specificity (relevance of recall), and suggests how to identify a manageable number of relevant citations, how to save the citations, and how to obtain the full text. In part 2, the article concludes by alerting readers to some of the limitations and pitfalls of database-searching.

Keywords: EDUCATION; PROFESSIONAL; EDUCATION; DENTAL; CONTINUING; EDUCATION; DENTAL; GRADUATE; MEDLINE; DATABASES,; BIBLIOGRAPHIC; INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL; ABSTRACTING AND INDEXING; EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICINE; DATABASE SEARCH TECHNIQUE; SENSITIVITY AND SPECIFICITY; COMPUTER USER TRAINING; KEYWORDS; SUBJECT; HEADINGS; TRUNCATION; CITATION SEARCH

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1308/135576101322561949

Publication date: 2001-07-01

More about this publication?

• Primary Dental Care is the research journal of the Faculty of General Dental Practice (UK), and the only peer-reviewed journal dedicated wholly to research in primary care dentistry. The aim of the journal is to promote academic and research aspects of primary dental care by publishing relevant peer-reviewed papers. In addition, reviews, reports of clinical cases, book reviews, opinions, summaries and abstracts of scientific meetings and news items are included.

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