Once my PICOT question has been established my first step would be systematic research of the literature related to my topic of interest, which is implementing a clinical practice protocol/guideline for the management of hypertension or disease in the homeless or population/clinic-type. Databases such as Pubmed, Google Scholar, or Web of Science could be useful for this task.
Considering my search criteria, I will use the keyword, or MeSH (MedicaI Subject Heading) terms, as good support for finding the ones relevant. Such vocabulary will be directly related to the condition, remedy, and settings, for instance, “Hypertension,” “high blood pressure,” “Homeless,” “Clinical practice protocol,” “Guideline,” and “Management,” as it will be an exact match. I will integrate these keywords and use operators such as AND, OR, and NOT to tighten the search, including only the relevant literature.
To search for articles pertaining to a single intervention, I will find reliable primary sources of research written by the researchers who conducted the study or secondary research that combines information from multiple primary sources. To be ideal, they would be properly designed study designs that are “unfiltered” random control trials instead of just case studies and the “filtered” study meta-analysis in place of literature reviews (Birkle et al., 2020). If I come across an article that is almost what I am looking for in PubMed, I will click the “similar studies” tab on the right-hand corner of the screen and try out the “ancestry” approach by referencing these articles to explore further and find other studies on the same topic.
Next, I will analyze the studies for quality, considering aspects like the date of publishing, and methods (dosing, duration, sample size, and author bias). In this exploratory study, I will develop patterns in the data by looking at the amount of evidence, the primary conclusions, and the consistency of findings. This will assist in deciding if there is enough data to generalize indication as it should be prescribed by doctors in general practice or not.
Reference
Birkle, C., Pendlebury, D. A., Schnell, J., & Adams, J. (2020). Web of Science as a data source for research on scientific and scholarly activity. Quantitative Science Studies, 1(1), 363-376. https://direct.mit.edu/qss/article/1/1/363/15569
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