An evidence based approach is one that looks to research to answer clinical and service-related questions and uses the best available evidence to do so. CareSearch relates to evidence in three specific ways:

• Identifies and enables access to evidence relevant to palliative care
• Uses evidence and research approaches in the design and development of the website
• Contributes to the evidence base through project research.

Within CareSearch access to evidence is incorporated in many different ways. Content pages follow a described search method to find the strongest evidence relevant to that topic. There is a special section on Finding Evidence. This includes specially written real time PubMed searches that are designed to enable immediate access to this literature and evidence database. Users can also access two databases specifically designed to make palliative care research evidence more available. The CareSearch Review Collection provides immediate references to systematic reviews which have met some basic quality criteria. CareSearch Grey Literature provides access to hard-to-find palliative care literature, such as theses and unindexed journal articles.

As well as helping clinicians and consumers access evidence and evidence-based resources, CareSearch looked to what evidence was available to help design and produce the website. Research work from informatics, education and psychology was used to help design the page layouts and the information architecture. For example, research on font size and age [1] led to us to include the facility to increase font size. Research evidence on readability informed how the pages were worded and presented. [2,3] Evidence from evaluation methodology on formative processes was incorporated in usability testing activities.

CareSearch has actively researched key areas to inform the website’s development and use. For example, the PubMed searches were implemented following research work on how to identify and filter palliative care literature within the general and specialist literature. [4] The CareSearch Grey Literature was developed following identification of sources of missing literature. [5]

Related CareSearch pages
CareSearch Grey Literature
CareSearch Systematic Review Collection
Palliative Filter
PubMed Topic Searches

References

1. Nahm ES, Preece J, Resnick B, Mills ME. Usability of health Web sites for older adults: a preliminary study 
   Comput Inform Nurs. 2004 Nov-Dec;22(6):326-34
2. Friedman DB, Hoffman-Goetz L. A systematic review of readability and comprehension instruments used for print and web-based cancer information Health Educ Behav. 2006 Jun;33(3):352-73 
3. Ownby RL. Influence of vocabulary and sentence complexity and passive voice on the readability of consumer-oriented mental health information on the Internet. AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2005;:585-9
4. Sladek R, Tieman J, Fazekas BS, Abernethy AP, Currow DC. Development of a subject search filter to find information relevant to palliative care in the general medical literature. J Med Libr Assoc. 2006 Oct;94(4):394-401.
5. Tieman JJ, Abernethy AP, Fazekas BS, Currow DC. CareSearch: finding and evaluating Australia's missing palliative care literature. BMC Palliat Care. 2005 Aug 8;4:4.

 This page was created on 1 May 2008 and is due for review in May 2010