How we take a meaningful approach to clinical questions

Palliative care is a rapidly evolving, multidisciplinary field of practice. The types of evidence and knowledge produced within palliative care are accordingly varied and encompass many different types of research methodologies. Specific problems in research in the palliative care setting make some research exceedingly difficult to do, so that some study designs we might like to use to answer important questions relating to practice may never be available to us.

An evidence-based approach is one which turns to the evidence to answer clinical and service-related questions, and uses the best available evidence to do so. It involves appraising the quality of the evidence being used, and acknowledges the strength of the evidence for decision making.

Why palliative care evidence makes a difference? - Dr Diana Ferreira

CareSearch relates to Evidence in 3 ways:

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

In practice this means CareSearch:

  • Includes many different types of research and evidence, and applies appropriate standards to each to access their quality.
  • Applies a quality assurance process that is up-front and transparent, so that basic standards of evidence are met before a resource, link or reference is included in the site.
  • Refers practitioners back to the literature to further explore most of the issues covered, and also provides pre-written PubMed literature search strategies for many important topics.
  • Identifies areas of uncertainty in the literature, and gaps in the evidence base.

The ways CareSearch provides access to evidence:

  • CareSearch pages follow a described search method to find the strongest evidence relevant to that topic.
  • The section on Searching for Evidence includes pre-defined, real time PubMed searches that are designed to enable immediate access to this literature and evidence database.
  • Users can access two CareSearch databases specifically designed to make palliative care research evidence more available.
  • The CareSearch Review Collection provides access to a list of peer-reviewed systematic reviews which have met some basic quality criteria.
  • The CareSearch Grey Literature database provides access to hard-to-find palliative care literature, such as conference abstracts and program reports.

As well as helping clinicians and consumers access evidence and evidence-based resources, CareSearch looks for evidence that help use design and maintain our websites. 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.

Staff working with the CareSearch project also actively research and contribute to the evidence for on managing and translating knowledge and the value and effectiveness of online health information. 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] More recently we have contributed to contributed to evidence around website accessibility. [5-6]

CareSearch also engages in primary research to understand the needs, concerns and preferences of our users so that we can provide relevant support. Through the Dying2Learn MOOC we gain insights into the attitudes of Australians towards death and dying. [7-8] Through direct consultation with specific groups of users, we learned more about effective engagement with users around attitudes and needs in palliative care. [9]

Last updated 25 June 2026