Searching the Literature

A few things to consider when choosing concepts

Falls

• This is likely the most important concept and should definitely be included in the search.

Elderly

• Do interventions designed for elderly patients work best or could interventions that are effective for other patient populations also apply?
• Since this is a well-researched topic and our question is specific to this population, I will include elderly for now. 
• Age groups are important to consider when constructing your search and including (or excluding) it will limit (or broaden) your results.

Acute Care

• Do I need to limit to Acute Care or could interventions from other settings also be effective?
• Like elderly, this term may be useful but could also restrict your results too much. I will include it for now but will adjust as needed.

Intervention(s)

• This may or may not be a useful search term.
• Authors often do not use the word "intervention" when discussing interventions.
  • Instead, they may use specific terms like "education", "apps", "training", etc.
  • They may also use broader terms like "improving", "facilitators", "reducing", etc. instead.
• "Intervention" can be useful for exploratory searches, especially when the other concepts alone yield too many results.
  • Assist in finding reviews that have been done on related topics.
  • It can also help with search term harvesting, identifying additional relevant terms such as "education" or "apps".

Terms I Will Not Be Searching For (But May Be Useful in Some Cases)

Adding more concepts does not increase the number of results; instead, it makes the search more specific, potentially decreasing the number of results.

• Evidence-based - Often not explicitly used in research articles. It is generally assumed that studies and trials themselves provide the evidence.
• Effective - There are many ways authors discuss this without using this exact word. In most cases, researchers inherently address effectiveness.
• Reducing - can be useful in some searches, but similar to effective, authors may use many alternative terms. Often reducing or improving is the primary goal being discussed, even if those words are not used.
• Patient - since we are already searching in health sciences databases, this term is usually unnecessary.