THEA 299x: Simulated Healthcare Performance (Thatcher)

Welcome, THEA 299x students!

Throughout your course, you will need to consult outside information sources and bring them in to your healthcare simulations.  As stated in your syllabus, under "Academic Integrity," you need to use legitimate, scholarly sources -- sources you find through the Ball State University Libraries' web site.

The Ball State Libraries have a wealth of information both online and in print form.  So you have many options for finding quality healthcare information.

This guide will cover:

• general research tips and techniques, especially for library database searching
• Information about MEDLINEPlus, your go-to resource for easily digestible medical information
• links to recommended authoritative online encyclopedias
• an introduction to OneSearch, Ball State's library discovery tool
• searching in more specialized library databases:
  • Health Source: Consumer Edition
  • Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition
  • APA PsycINFO
• using the Find It @ BALL STATE button to get the full-text of articles you want.

TIP: MEDLINEPlus is produced by the US National Library of Medicine, a trusted source.  You can feel confident you're being led to reliable information that's also written in language you can understand.

To search, use the search box in the upper-right, or the "Health Topics" link in the banner.  Both will lead you to accurate, readable information.

Two titles of particular usefulness.  They're included when you search the entire collection using the Gale e-Books: Medicine link above.

As you search in library databases, here are a few tips which may be useful:

• Understand the difference between OneSearch and other library databases:
  • OneSearch (linked below) lets you cast a very broad net and find lots to look through, searching through many of our article databases all at the same time as you also search for the physical items we own in our libraries.
  • Health Source (we have two editions: Nursing/Academic and Consumer) and APA PsycInfo (linked below) are examples of our subject-specific databases.  Their focus will be on health (for Health Source) and psychology (for PsycInfo).
• Put titles, and names, and other phrases in quotation marks.  (ex. "ovarian cancer", "septic shock")
• Consider using the CHOP, DROP, and OR technique for searching when you have more than one idea involved in your search.  It allows you to cast your net wide, so you bring up titles which might be related to your topic -- closely or tangentially -- so that you can consider them.
  • First you CHOP your topic up, identifying the important words.
  • Then you DROP each search word into a separate search box.
  • Finally you consider if there are other synonyms or related terms which might be wise to search on, using OR between them.
• The "Subjects" field in a record is helpful in finding good terms to use as search terms.

Each of the following databases has its advantages and its disadvantages.  Understanding the differences between them can help you as you decide which ones to use as you work through different topics related to your healthcare scenarios.

TIP: OneSearch is where you'll go if you want to find books we own.  It's also good if you want to search very broadly, across many disciplines.  But be prepared to go through lots and lots of results!

TIP: Health Source: Consumer Edition has a mixture of articles aimed at the general public and articles aimed at healthcare workers.  This means some articles will be quite readable, and not too full of medical jargon.  Some, however, will present lots more medical details.  It's not a huge database, however, so you'll want to search elsewhere on your topic as well.

TIP: Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition is aimed at healthcare professionals, like the nursing students you're working with.  Expect medical language that may be tough to read without a dictionary.  Still useful as a resource even if you don't read entire articles and instead stick to the introduction and conclusion.

TIP: APA PsycINFO has a focus on academic research done in the field of psychology.  If you're interested in the emotional side of something, or discussion regarding how relationships work in a certain situation, PsycINFO can help you.  You can expect the language to be that used by professionals in the field of psychology.  Reading the introduction and conclusion to some articles can be helpful in getting to the vital part.

Because you're searching a large number of databases at the same time when you do a search in OneSearch, you will get a wide variety of results.  Some will be books (in our physical library), many will be articles (found through our article databases).

A topic that you may want to investigate is how patients and doctors communicate.  We could try this search:

We find many, many results.  First let's focus on finding books.  Then we'll look at finding full-text articles.

To limit your results to books:

From the results page, look on the left for the CONTENT TYPE limiter.  Choose "Book/eBook" as seen here:

In our results, we'll see both physical books, located in our libraries, as well as ebooks:

To find which floor to go to in Bracken Library for books in the General Collection, consult Book Locations and Floorplans and look for the chart that says "General Collection Book Locations."

To limit your results by content type:

In considering which sorts of information sources you want to use, consider:

• Journal articles: are written by experts/scholars, use specialized vocabulary from that field, include lists of sources authors used in writing them, are often quite lengthy, and take a while to get published (so they can't cover current topics very well)
• Magazine articles: are written by staff reporters, are often conversational in tone, tend to be shorter, often include illustrations and photography, and don't take too long to get published
• Newspaper articles: are written by staff reporters, have the general public as their audience, and take little time to publish (so they're ideal for very current topics)

Since journal articles in healthcare will likely be difficult to understand, we may consider choosing magazines and newspapers under CONTENT TYPE, as shown here:

To combine multiple terms using Advanced Search:

The Advanced Search option in OneSearch allows you to bring in different ways to describe the different aspects of your search.

Click on "Advanced Search" in the red bar.  

To look for articles on communicating with your doctor, this search may help:

Notice how the terms in the first box are synonyms.  Also notice that the OR needs to be in ALL-CAPS.

To learn more about your results:

Click on the "Quick Look" button to get more information about a particular title.  Often it will provide the abstract, or a list of the subjects it covers, both of which helps to get an idea of what the article is about.

To get to the full article:

Either click on the article title or the "Full Text Online" link.

• Sometimes it will take you directly to the article.
• Sometimes you maybe be brought to another OneSearch page (like this one), where you need to click on a link under "View Online."

(Unless you're on campus, you'll need to then log in with your Ball State username and password to pull the full article up.)

Be willing to scroll through your list of results to find the ones that look best to you.

Reminder: Health Source: Nursing/Academic is aimed at healthcare professionals and students.  Expect medical terminology.

Here's an example of a search that might be useful in this database:

The quotation marks around the phrases in the first and second box tell the database to keep those words together and only bring up results with those words in that order.

REMINDER: Health Source: Consumer Edition has a mixture of articles -- some journals aimed at healthcare personnel, some magazines aimed at the general public.  But health topics are the focus of all of the them.

It may be useful to search for complications or risks associated with the disease or condition you're researching, as in this search:

Putting a string or synonyms or related terms together in a search box with "or" in between each word is a powerful way to search!

Consider limiting your results to the health magazines by looking on the left, under "Source Types."  This will focus on shorter, more readable articles.

Reminder: APA PsycINFO has a focus on psychological topics.  Expect terminology used by experts in the field.

Here's an example of what a search could look like in APA PsycINFO:

Obviously, by simply changing the terms used in that last box you can focus in on the particular condition or disease your character is having to deal with.