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Primary Health Care

Searching for Synthesised Evidence

Cochrane Library

What is it? The Cochrane Library consists of a collection of evidence based medicine databases that contain different types of high-quality evidence to inform healthcare decision making. It includes the Cochrane database of systematic reviews, which are the gold standard of medical literature.
Fulltext availability:  Cochrane systematic reviews are available for free.
Searching tips: Advanced search lets you search specific fields, or look at types of studies, e.g. systematic reviews.

Cochrane advanced search

Cochrane Clinical Answers

What is it?  Cochrane Clinical Answers are truncated summaries of Cochrane systematic reviews, designed to inform clinical descion making. Each summary is in the form of a clinical question, with a short answer and the opportunity to “drill down” to the evidence from relevant Cochrane reviews.

Cochrane Clinical Answers

Summary example:

Cochrane Clinical Answers summary example