About this chapter

This chapter deals with the challenge of managing data often in the form of citations found in medical databases. The second section covers the need to have a strategy in order to support evidence-based practice. The third section describes in more detail some reliable databases that pharmacists may find useful for their evidence based practice.

Managing publications

The large volume of data that comes across the desk of many pharmacists creates a challenge in finding ways to store and retrieve valuable information. Most of us have moved away from large filing cabinets of photocopied papers and prefer to store information and knowledge electronically. It is remarkable to see medical libraries that were once filled with long rows of bound journals being stripped out to make space for computer terminals with fast access to the same journals electronically.

One of the most useful tools is the bibliographic database which has been popular in many research settings within and outside medicine but has not been adopted into pharmacy world to any great extent. This chapter sets out to describe the benefits of such systems to facilitate some of the key aims of this book including identifying useful evidence and being able to effectively prepare research articles for publication. These software packages are designed to facilitate two important processes:

1. To store the results of our searches in a format that can be reordered or searched to find a particular paper.

2. To facilitate the preparation of research papers by providing an electronic means of identifying those articles which you cite and want to include in your reference list. The reference list …