This fantastic website brings together many sources of evidence about patient experiences in the UK health and social care system. It has a searchable library of documents, a geographical analysis of data and much more.
It is vital for health professionals to be able to use high quality information, both for their own practice and to help service users understand health and illness. I developed a 5-point framework for thinking about this. See the video below or a piece from the Nursing Times website: Nurses must consider which information to use and trust.
You can find statistics on all sorts of websites, but these are likely to be the most reliable sources.
Students 4 Best Evidence is a network of students providing a range of really useful information on evidence-based health care. This includes explanations of some of the terminology associated with health and medical research alongside advice on searching for and evaluating evidence.
The internet can be one of the most valuable tools in your quest for information during your time at university. However, with so much information out there, it can be very hard to find the best information, or to know that you've found it when you've got it!
Use the ideas on this page to start making smart use of online information to support your studies.
Much of the information found online is known as "grey literature" - information that is published outside of the traditional channels of books and journals. This includes conference papers, theses, research reports, government documents etc. Some useful sites for this can be found on this page, and you may also find the document below on sources of grey literature useful.
These sites are often your best bets when starting a search for web-based information.
Most UK Health bodies such as the Colleges and Royal Colleges have a website. If you are a member, you can often access useful libraries of really useful documents online.
Some bodies also give their members access to exclusive journals not available anywhere else. Examples include British Paramedic Journal from College of Paramedics and Synergy News from Society of Radiography.
Specific sites of particular interest include:
These sites provide info about clinical trials:
There are loads of apps available to help with studying. If you use an app for health-related information is is extremely important to make sure it comes from a reliable source such as NICE (eg Nice Guidance app) or the Resuscitation Council (iResus app).
If you are not sure where clinical information is coming from, it is wise not to rely on it!
BestBETS is a site which brings together summaries of the "best evidence" in answer to different clinical queries. The original focus of the site was on emergency medicine, but it now covers other areas such as primary care and nursing as well. Each topic includes details of the search performed to identify useful literature.
NOTE: This site has not been updated since 2014 (with many topics being older), so you may wish to search for more up-to-date information.
