PROCESS AND OUTCOME OF A SEARCH FOR INFORMATION ON A TOPIC FROM HEALTH OR SOCIAL CARE

Process and Outcome of a Search for Information on a Topic from Health or Social Care



Process and Outcome of a Search for Information on a Topic from Health or Social Care

Introduction

There are currently 2.3 million people in the UK with diabetes, and up to 95% of them are type 2 diabetics (Diabetes UK, 2007a). Life expectancy is reduced by up to 10 years in those with this type of disease (Whittaker, 2004); and much of the burden relating to care falls on the individuals themselves (Whittaker, 2004). In the majority of cases, type 2 diabetes is treated with lifestyle changes such as healthier diet, weight loss, and increased physical exercise (Diabetes UK, 2007b); and maintaining blood glucose levels as close to normal as possible slows down the progression of long term complications (Whittaker, 2004).

Patient education has been recognised by many (Walsh, 2002. Brooker & Nicol, 2003 and Alexander et al, 2006) as fundamental in the treatment of type 2 diabetes; which is why the topic of patient education in people with this chronic condition has been chosen.

Search Statements and Key words

Before performing a literature search, a clinical question must first be formulated and the best way to do this is by using the P.I.C.O. framework (Craig, 2007). In this framework the “P” stands for population, the “I” for intervention, the “C” for comparison; and the “O” stands for outcome. To narrow the search further it is possible to limit results to specific years and countries. By narrowing this search within the years 2000-2007 and selecting UK and Ireland Journals only presented 9 hits. It was decided to search within CINAHL (www.cinahl.com) again, keeping the first key word the same and changing the second key word to Diet, this key word returned 10,626 hits. However, when the two keyword searches were combined with the limits of years 2000-2007, and UK and Ireland Journals, this brought up 4 matches, though only two were applicable.

In this literature search the population used will be adults with type 2 diabetes. The intervention is a patient education programme which will be compared with routine care; and the outcome intended is improved blood glucose; resulting in the following clinical question:

“Do patient education programmes for adults with type 2 diabetes improve blood glucose levels compared to routine care?”

However, although a clinical question has been formulated, consideration must be given to the different words which can be used to mean the same thing. Therefore, when searching for information, different definitions were included and are detailed in the table on the following page.

PICO

Search

Search Word

Medline

2003 - 2007

British Nursing Index

1994 - 2007

CINAHL

1982 - 2007

Embase

1996 2007

Population

1

Diabet $ mellitus

17848

0

38

636

2

Type 2 diabet $

15701

437

5120

25139

3

Type II diabet $

1131

7

346

2676

4

Non insulin dependent diabet $

308

10

8441

41152

5

NIDDM

305

7

469

3195

6

Search for 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5

22680

456

9604

45192

Intervention

7

Education

91557

14675

194679

169005

8

Train$

53378

3781

46859

110895

9

Counsel$

14045

1401

16763

37908

10

Information

144753

4559

111618

311322

11

Search for 7 or 8 or 9 or 10

264252

21166

319033

547057

Outcome

12

Improv $

243838

5467

91983

466461

13

Self care

5748

673

14583

5265

14

Self management

1507

285

3003

2138

15

Glycated Haemoglobin

253

5

79

542

16

Glycaemic control

1036

100

371

2235

17

BM

2929

0

263

6372

18

Blood Glucose

19515

172

6942

16243

19

Search for 13 or 14 or 15 or 16 or 17 or 18

29005

1076

22777

30686

Limits

20

Combine 6 ...