Background: Efficient literature searching and the application of formal rules of evidence in evaluating the clinical literature are the two key skills defining the practice of evidence-based medicine. Although clinicians embrace the concepts of evidence-based medicine, most identify limited personal time as the major barrier towards its implementation into daily practice. Busy clinicians who practice evidence-based medicine identify systematic reviews and evidence-based clinical practice guidelines as very useful resources.
Methods: This review presents a simple, easy-to-follow, three-step searching strategy that emphasises the use of powerful new PubMed features that allow clinicians to retrieve high-quality systematic reviews, clinical practice guidelines and primary studies with a single mouse click. The overall effectiveness of the process is further improved by highlighting the major features of successful and unsuccessful literature searches.
Conclusions: At the end of this tutorial the reader should be able to conduct efficient and effective literature searches that support clinical decision making in under 10 minutes.