Search Techniques

1. Decide what it is you are looking for. Write down a few keywords. Are there synonyms or alternative terms you need to use? Is it a broad topic or a specific government publication or NHS guidelines? Do you want to restrict your search to quality reviewed health and nursing sites?
   
   

2. Decide how best to look for this information. Do you want to use a Search Engine (Google) or a Subject Gateway (Intute) or do you want to search a single site (e.g. Dept of Health, WAG, NHS Direct)? Choose what you think is going to get you the best results.
   
   

3. Structure your search. Which keywords will you use? Are there synonyms or alternative terms that can be used? Are you searching for a specific phrase? Are there terms you want to exclude? Make sure you structure your search in line with the way the search tool you are using works.

Key Health Websites:

• Department of Health http://www.dh.gov.uk

• Health in Wales  http://www.wales.nhs.uk/

• The King’s Fund http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/

• National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) www.nice.org.uk

• NHS Evidence  http://www.evidence.nhs.uk

• Welsh Assembly Government http://wales.gov.uk

   

Professional  Organisations

• Royal College of Nursing

• Nursing & Midwifery Council

Keeping up to date with Health News

• BBC Health http://www.bbc.co.uk/health

• BMJ UK Health News http://www.bmj.com/channels/news.dtl

• Reuters Health News http://www.reutershealth.com/en/index.html

Consumer Health

• MEDLINE Plus http://medlineplus.gov

• NHS Choices http://www.nhs.uk

• NHS Direct Wales http://www.nhsdirect.wales.nhs.uk

Search Tools

As well as search engines like Google, you can use more specialised search tools such as:

 

• INTUTE http://www.intute.ac.uk/nmah – Search across some of the best web resources for health science.

• Google Scholar http://scholar.google.co.uk – provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles

• DMOZ Directory http://www.dmoz.org - These use human indexing, to organise the web into subject areas – e.g Finance, Jobs, Health etc.