hne health libraries linking evidence with practice

Legacy PubMed has been retired, and New PubMed has become the default PubMed site. If it’s been a while since you ran a search on PubMed – or feel a little anxious about the changes – don’t worry, here’s an article that will walk you through the new features.

They include: mobile-friendly design; a cite button - that lets you toggle between different formats, or download citations as an Endnote-compatible file; social media sharing buttons; and a button to copy a permalink. All collections and saved searches stored in your ‘My NCBI’ account are available in the new site.

Find out how to build a search strategy, manage results, save records and see comparisons to legacy PubMed on the Library webpage – ‘Tutorials and Guides’ - PubMed .

For more search tips – see the National Library of Medicine support page

This article examines recent hydroxychloroquine-azithromycin research, and finds that it is underpinned by very low-quality methodology. The authors, who include researchers from Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact and the GUIDE Research Methods Group at McMaster University, consider the overall body of recent COVID-19 research to be unreliable. Flawed methodology and sub-optimal reporting of research findings could lead to biased estimates of effect. This could lead to substandard treatment decisions, and may be detrimental to patients. The article provides specific suggestions for improving on COVID-19 research methods and reporting, with a focus on issues that researchers must consider in their methodology and reporting if we are to have confidence in the estimates of effect.

READ full-text article
Discussion on the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine website

A panel of 36 experts from 12 countries, proposed 53 questions relevant to the management of COVID-19 in critically ill patients in the ICU. All panel members completed the World Health Organization conflict of interest disclosure form. They identified relevant and recent systematic reviews on most questions relating to supportive care. The certainty of evidence was assessed using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach. The panel then generated recommendations based on the balance between benefit and harm, resource and cost implications, equity, and feasibility. Recommendations were either strong or weak, or in the form of best practice recommendations. No recommendation was provided for the following topics: infection control, laboratory diagnosis and specimens, hemodynamic support, ventilatory support, and COVID-19 therapy. When available, the panel will provide new recommendations in further releases of the guidelines.

READ SSC guidelines
LISTEN to author discussion
VIEW full-size infographic

Current research says that in ideal lab conditions, the COVID-19 virus can survive for up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to 2-3 days on plastic and stainless steel. We want to help you stay safe in the library – so we’ve implemented book quarantines, social distancing, and regular cleaning of surfaces such as tables, door handles and computer keyboards and mice.

LISTEN: CDC guidance on mitigating COVID-19 when managing paper-based, circulating, and other types of collections
SOURCE: National Institutes of Health news release
NEJM: Aerosol and surface stability of HCoV-19 (SARS-CoV-2) compared to SARS-CoV-1