| dc.description.abstract | Abstract:
Evidence-based practice (EBP) provides health personnel with a method to use critically appraised and scientifically proven evidence for delivering quality health care to a specific population1. Regularly, new and more effective medicines, medical devices, and procedures are invented. One major goal behind all these efforts is to help health personnel such as doctors, dentists, nurses, and medical technicians provide the best possible care and treatment to patients. Nevertheless, lack of time, due to heavy workload, with the increasing volume in the medical literature; health personnel cannot keep up to date with new evidence especially if skills for systematic search are lacking. Moreover, the literature contains a variety of knowledge forms, many of which are not suitable for direct clinical practice application. In addition, open access (OA) databases as part of information sources currently used by health personnel seem to be un-user-friendly when it comes to systematic search. Most of the increasingly available OA databases use a standard structure, Dublin Core (DC)2, which does not accommodate systematic literature search in relation to EBP approach. This makes it difficult for librarians to effectively provide ongoing training for clinicians in searching the best evidence, especially for promoting effective and justifiable EBP clinical decision-making.
Due to the fact that the systematic search is important especially in relation to best practices as well as solid research-based evidence for clinical decision-making; the OA databases dealing with Health science should add new fields to their DC structure. It is important that OA databases, as it should be with all other information sources, match the standard needs of the user. As such, the objective of this study is to explore how to innovate a system that can allow systematic search of health records in the OA databases.
We suggest developing a system for OA databases that can allow systematic search for health records. To achieve this, an experiment will be conducted to test the technical possibility of developing the DC structure to accommodate the extension of the number of keywords. The system will automatically allow each record to be searched for keywords that will then be added to the metadata of the record. Besides, the system will be innovated such that the search engine will link to the MeSH terms from medical databases, such as PubMed. This implies that the experimented OA database will include more fields that are likely to encourage or reduce barriers for the smooth adoption of EBP.
This study will shade more light on why and how OA databases can hinder certain barriers to the smooth adoption of EBP for quality health care. It will contribute to shorten the time for health personnel in obtaining clinical evidence systematically from OA databases, such that they can always be up-to-date with new evidence for best clinical decision-making. Hence, a contribution to delivering quality health care for all, given that the database is open.
Besides, we would like to hear feedback from those who are already working on similar databases or are planning to develop one.
Keywords: Evidence-based practice, Clinic, Open Access, Database, Systematic Search | |
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