Evidence Doesn’t Start with Results: A New Cochrane Protocol Is a Wake-Up Call on Why Search Skills Are Crucial

Evidence Doesn’t Start with Results: A New Cochrane Protocol Is a Wake-Up Call on Why Search Skills Are Crucial

Search Skills Matter We talk a lot about evidence-based practice, but far less about the skill that makes it possible in the first place: finding the evidence. A newly published Cochrane protocol examining educational interventions for literature searching sends a clear message—searching skills matter, and gaps in training persist across health professions Not All Searches Are the Same A key message from the Cochrane protocol is that not all searches serve the same purpose—a distinction often described as precision versus recall, but rarely explained to health professionals. Searching for precision aims to find a small number of highly relevant papers…
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Health Sciences Librarians – II. Involvement in teaching students about EBM

Health Sciences Librarians – II. Involvement in teaching students about EBM

This is my second post about elevating Health Sciences Libraries and Librarians in India.  Here I would like to share an example from an article in the Journal of the Medical Library Association (USA) - about a study by a librarian and his medical colleagues.  (Read my first post here) This article discusses how a health sciences librarian conducted an introductory course on EBM for first year medical students and how he specifically did an intervention to improve their ability to "formulate an answerable question". Asking an answerable question is an art that one learns with practice and of course…
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Health science libraries and librarians – rewrite the expectations!

Health science libraries and librarians – rewrite the expectations!

Should the library be closed? This was a question I found in the main library file, when I joined the  Hinduja Hospital as Librarian in March 1992. That was nearly three decades ago. The reason stated was - the library was not being utilized enough. Having just joined, the question seemed scary to me. How long would my job last - I thought to myself? It turned out that I stayed in the job for 3.5 years. By that time I had turned the library into a bee hive of activity, usage and more. And it is gratifying to remember…
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