How to keep up with medical literature

All medical practice and research should aim to be evidence based, as far as this is possible. The first step to achieve this is to keep up with what is already known. With medical knowledge growing constantly, it has become necessary to possess a high level of information literacy to be able to keep up with the literature. Furthermore, as patients can now search for information on the internet, clinicians must be able to respond to this type of information in a professional way when needed. Here, the development of viable search strategies for journal articles, books, book chapters and similar sources, selection of appropriate databases, search tools and selection methods are described and illustrated with examples from rheumatology. Further, the up-keep of skills over time, and the acquisition of literature just in time, are discussed.

Keywords: bibliographic, databases, evidence-based medicine, information literacy, information services, internet, literature