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Physical Therapy: Searching the Literature: Home

A guide to literature searching.

What is a literature search?

A systematic and thorough search of published literature in order to collect information about a particular topic.

Why do we do literature searches?

  • Create research proposals
  • Collect evidence on effectiveness of clinical treatments
  • To make a clinical decision
  • Gather information for presentations

The process

Steps for Acquiring Evidence

  1. Identify a clinical problem
  2. Create a well-defined research question (using PICO)
  3. Translate PICO into a search strategy
    • Brainstorm and gather synonyms
    • Construct the search strategy
  4. Select most likely resources (databases)
  5. Tailor search strategy to database(s)
  6. Save search & export citations to reference manager