title: How do I find a point-of-care answer to my clinical question?
abstract: Emergency physicians often need point-of-care access to current, valid information to guide patient management. Most emergency physicians do not work in a hospital with a computerized decision support system that prompts and provides them with information to answer their clinical questions. Searching for answers to clinical questions online, especially those related to diagnosis and treatment, can be challenging, in part because determining the validity and clinical applicability of the results of individual studies is beyond the time constraints of most emergency physicians. This article describes currently available point-of-care sources of evidence-based information to answer clinical questions and provides the access information for each.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Worster
authors.forename: R Brian
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Haynes
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D020330:Bell Palsy / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000628:therapy; D002170:Canada; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D004635:Emergency Medicine / Q000458:organization & administration; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration*; D004638:Emergency Treatment; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D008490:Medical Informatics; D019095:Point-of-Care Systems; D020521:Stroke / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000628:therapy