Literature Searching
Before you start your project it is essential to find out what is already known about the research topic and to read any relevant work that is out there. As MI pharmacists, the need to develop high level skills in retrieving, assimilating and interpreting published work comes with the territory. But, at risk of teaching grandma to suck eggs, we will highlight some pointers in the context of pharmacy practice research.

Why Review The Literature?

• to refine your research question and objectives
• to highlight research possibilities you have overlooked
• to discover whether explicit recommendations for further research into your topic have been made
• to help avoid inappropriate repetition of other people’s work
• to gain insight into current opinions
• to investigate appropriate research strategies and methodologies
  

Where To Find Pharmacy Practice Research
In the past pharmacists have not been renowned for getting their research published; fortunately that situation is changing. Today we are publishing more articles and they are being published not only in pharmacy journals but also in highly respected, mainstream journals. That means that you will need to do a broad search of medical bibliographic databases, such as Medline, as well as pharmacy orientated systems, like Pharm-line and International Pharmaceutical Abstracts. Remember that Embase indexes more pharmaceutical and pharmacological journals than Medline. Also note that the Iowa Drug Information System, has an indexing policy that excludes much pharmacy practice research.

1. UKMI Website
This website contains a list of published and ongoing research concerned with Medicines Information Services in the Research Register section.

2. Pharm-line
The Pharm-line database is an excellent starting point if you are trying to find pharmacy practice research, particularly if it has been carried out in the UK. The database includes abstracts of articles on pharmacy practice and the clinical use of drugs from over 100 major English language pharmaceutical and medical journals. You can find a list of the journals covered here. All medicines information centres in the UK should have access to Pharm-line and to the user guide that gives detailed search instructions.

3. International Pharmaceutical Abstracts
The International Pharmaceutical Abstracts database, produced by the American Society of Hospital Pharmacists (ASHP), offers comprehensive coverage of world pharmacy literature from 1970, including pharmacy practice and education. The scope of the database ranges from clinical pharmacy to legislation, sociology, economics, ethics and information processing and literature. Coverage includes abstracts from state pharmacy journals, ASHP meetings (from 1988), with the records updated monthly. International Pharmaceutical Abstracts is searchable through various interfaces, including online (e.g. Dialog), CDROM, Ovid and the web.

The biggest drawback to use of this database has always been its relatively high cost. Experienced pharmacists in regional medicines information centres will search International Pharmaceutical Abstracts online occasionally, especially for those enquiries that specifically relate to pharmacy practice research. However, the high usage cost has been prohibitive, and we probably use it less often than we could in today’s climate of evidence-based medicine, when a thorough review of the evidence can be essential. ASHP has introduced web-based searching of International Pharmaceutical Abstracts (Pharmsearch from IPA). The pricing structure recognises that users may not wish to pay the full one year subscription fee (currently $2950) and includes the option of paying for ‘access blocks’ (equivalent to 100 search commands at the current cost of $90) that can be used over an 18 month period. The website includes a ‘sampler’ which will give you a feel for how the system is used. This search option has some attractions for medicines information centres. If you are not based in medicines information and want to find out more about an IPA search you should contact your regional centre.

4. Hand Searching
You may also need to search by hand through previous reports of research symposia and conferences such as those organised by UKCPA, RSPGB, UKCPA, and the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists. There is no denying that hand searching is extremely tedious but it can sometimes bring useful literature to light (it’s not so many years since literature searching of any kind was time-consuming and tedious!).

5. Unpublished And Ongoing Research
It is also worth trying to locate any unpublished or ongoing research; you can check out the NHS National Research Register here and we have included a section in this site to detail research projects that are ongoing in medicines information at Research Register . Other research registers are listed under Research Links. The Cochrane Library has some content relevant to pharmacy practice research (e.g. systematic review of the literature on training health professionals on smoking cessation) so shouldn’t be overlooked.

6. CINAHL
The Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature has an emphasis on nursing. However, about 35% of the records refer to allied health disciplines, such as health education or occupational therapy. Besides journal articles, CINAHL also covers books, conference proceedings, dissertations and standards of professional practice.

7. HealthSTAR
The Health Services Technology, Administration and Research database, which covers both clinical and non-clinical aspects of health care delivery. Some of the subjects covered include evaluation of patient outcomes, the effectiveness of services and quality assurance.

8. When all else fails……..
If you still haven’t come up with much and you begin to feel a bit desperate then it might be helpful to put a question on MI-UK Mailbase; this will allow you to find out whether any MI colleagues are aware of research that has already been done on your topic and possibly to gauge current practice in other parts of the country.