Participants - Up to 20.  The workshop is aimed at people who are new to methodical searches for evidence, but participants should have a basic knowledge of PubMed and research design.
Requirements –  Personal computers for all participants, with access to Cochrane Library, Clinical Evidence, PubMed, Lilacs/Bireme.   
      
Workshop aim:  the workshop is aimed at introducing participants to a methodical, pragmatic approach to retrieving evidence which answers clinical questions.  The workshop will focus on examples of searches for therapy questions, and will give scope for discussing the advantages and limitations of the illustrated approach.

Workshop structure:  The workshop is divided into three sessions.  There will be time for discussion at the end of the workshop.

        1.  Brief introduction to key evidence-based sources addressing clinical therapy questions.

        2.  Illustration of a search using a specific example.  We will work through four aspects:
        •        translating a clinical question into an answerable question using PICO
        •        creating a simple search / appraisal sheet
        •        finding references to answer the question using primary and secondary sources
        •        appraising the results in abstract form to produce a short list of papers

        3.  Participants will then work on a clinical query themselves, individually or in pairs.
  
We will focus first on producing an answerable question and simple appraisal sheet.  Participants will then have the choice of either:
-  using primary and secondary research resources in order to become more familiar with key methods for retrieving a set of abstracts for appraisal
        or
 - appraising a set of abstracts in order to select a shortlist of papers wh ich potentially answer the clinical question

The workshop will close with a general discussion of searching for evidence, including the advantages and limitations of different approaches.