Information Resources for Clinical Research, 1 of 5

>> Tracy Shields: Hi, I'm Tracy Shields, a biomedical librarian at the NIH Library, and today I'll be discussing in five parts Searching the Literature. In this first part, we're going to talk about the value of having a comprehensive literature search. In this section, we're going to learn about the importance of the literature search,

when to search, how you develop your search process, and the difference between a search versus a review. In 2001, there was a study done at Johns Hopkins University where a healthy human volunteer died after giving the study drug by inhalation. During the investigation, it was found that while they had done a standard

PubMed search and had looked at print edition of textbooks about that particular drug, they didn't find a potential toxicity that was related to the volunteers death because of not going back far enough in the literature. So a literature search is very important, not only for the context of your research, but for safety measures too.

So why do we search the literature? Well, it really reveals gaps in knowledge and exposes the evidence that is currently there. But it also avoids duplication of effort and shows where there are areas of consensus and debate within the research areas and may inform your methodology as well. It helps to identify the other researchers in the field

and some future directions for research, but it also ensures the ethical and professional standards needed to do clinical research in humans. So when you do the search -- well, obviously, before things start, when you're formulating your research question is a good place to start, but also just at the beginning of your research