Physical Therapy (DPT)

INTRODUCTION

How to login to WCU databases

If you’re on campus, go to westcoastuniversity.edu, under the Current Students tab click on Library, to get to the library’s home page that lists all of the library’s services, or there are links to the WCU Library in the Account menu of Canvas, or in the left sidebar within your Canvas courses. If you’re off campus, click My Library Account to sign in with your Library ID -- What’s your Library ID? – it’s the start of your West Coast email address, and a Password – What’s your Password? -- you made it up by clicking the Set/Reset Password link. If you forget to sign in right away, you’ll be prompted to sign in when you start any of the databases.

What is your question? + Where to search + How to search

The search software for databases and the web are "designed to work"; you type in some words and you almost always get some articles. It’s like any other household invention. But sometimes you don’t get any useful articles, or no articles at all, or articles that have your words but just aren’t what you had in mind. Most databases take you very literally, so … “If the computer can’t do the thinking for you, then you have to do the thinking for the computer.”

Your classes emphasize the importance of using evidence-based medicine, and citing the evidence that is found in peer-reviewed journal article. And remember that if you find an article with a quote or data that you might cite in your report, always download a copy of the article to your computer right away for safe keeping, since online resources and Internet addresses might change or disappear without notice.

WHERE TO SEARCH

WCU Library catalog is your first broad search to get an overview of how much has been written about your subject, deciding on the scope of your topic, and getting ideas for words to use. After you have chosen your exact title or subject, choose one database at a time.

Basic WCU catalog search:  always check the checkboxes on the left side to limit to "full text", "peer-reviewed", past 5-10 years (depending on the rarity of the disease/amount of research).

After you finish most of your searching, uncheck "full text" to look for any recent, reliable discoveries or often-cited articles that you want to quote, and order these articles through interlibrary loan.

CGS A-Z Database List

            Acland's Anatomy

            Clinical summaries: Lexicomp (drugs), Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database (alternative therapies), Rehabilitation Reference Center, Nursing Reference Center, Dynamed (for physicians)

            Article databases: MEDLINE, CINAHL, SportDiscus, PubMed, ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health, Academic Search Complete (for non-medical topics).

HOW TO SEARCH

Databases are designed to work, so even if you type words into the search box like Google Scholar, you will get a few articles most of the time. You might think there aren’t any more, and the articles you got are “good enough”. Then you scroll through the list, maybe one screen or two, and trust that the search engine read your mind and put the best articles at the top of the list. But if you use the right words in the right format; surprise; you can get a lot more articles. If you use search tools in the library databases that Google Scholar doesn't have, you can narrow them down instead of scrolling through a lot of articles you don’t want.

PICO

What search words? Start planning your topic by writing words in columns of a PICO table:  Patient,  Intervention,  Comparison,  Outcome, (Time).

            Example:  Back Pain,  Acupuncture,  Yoga,  Fast/Long-lasting pain relief

            Write down more synonyms for each term as you find them in subjects of articles

Boolean words (AND, OR, NOT)

            When you want info for comparing which is better, “acupuncture” or “yoga”, and you want articles that have both words, use AND between them: acupuncture AND yoga.

            If either of two synonyms or choices are okay, use OR and parentheses: (child OR children)

            To avoid scrolling through a lot of articles that you aren't interested in, place NOT before the word you don't want: (NOT children)           

Phrases

            For diseases that are more than one word, add quotation marks to search for the phrase as one word: "back pain"

Truncation (*)

            Most databases search for your words literally. Replace the suffix of the word with an asterisk to search for all words that begin with those letters: child* for (child OR children) .

            For differences in spelling within a word, replace one letter with a question mark: wom?n for (woman OR women), licen?e for (licence OR license)

MEDLINE search

Example:  In Advanced Search, type  “back pain”, “low back pain”, "acupuncture", "yoga"

            Show the effect of using more & fewer words, quotation marks, asterisk, question mark, parentheses.

            Show the parts of a typical article: title, abstract, subjects, main subjects, full text.

            Search: without using dropdown list to the right of the search boxes.

            Search in Subject, in Main subject, in Abstract, in Title, for fewer articles.

            Search in Text for more articles.

            Limits (Full text, Academic), checkboxes, scroll boxes (clinical trial, systematic review)

            Browse subject hierarchy: MeSH 2023 (search for “elderly”, instead use: aged)

                        “Explode” checkbox to include all subheadings

FOUND A CITATION, NEED FULL TEXT

If you have exact title of a real article:  search Google Scholar + search WCU Library catalog

            Google Scholar is also useful to find articles that cited it, and that the article cites.

If still not found, it might be mistyped.  “A-Z Journal Search” to Browse alphabetical list of Journals by volume/year, issue, page number

INTERLIBRARY LOAN

Review the procedure; a interlibrary loan form is in the Research Guides, or email a link to the citation (where you found it) to gullman@westcoastuniversity.edu and ababakhanian@westcoastuniversity.edu.