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…

