PT 7125: Clinical Decision Making I: Evidence-Based Practice Resources

APTA provides its members with access to copyrighted tests and measures.

APTA secures licenses for member use of tests and measures in clinical practice.

How to find tests and measures:

• Enter the name of a test/measure, a body part or a condition/symptom in the search box. Search results can be limited by using the drop down list, Filter By - Symptoms and Conditions.
• Phrase searching can be used to retrieve more relevant results. For instance, search "berg balance scale" or "parkinson disease".
• The Boolean operator, AND, can be used. For instance, entering shoulder AND arthritis in the search box retrieves relevant results. Alternately, entering the term, shoulder, and selecting arthritis from the Filter By - Symptoms and Conditions drop down list will also retrieve relevant results. 

Questions about APTA's evidence-based practice resources? Email the APTA library staff inforesources@apta.org

Access all Physical Therapy databases.

Access all library databases.

Contains millions of journal articles, including randomized control trials and systematic reviews, in the life sciences with a focus on biomedicine; uses MeSH (medical subject headings) to index records; included in PubMed

Search Strategies:

• Enter search terms (keywords or subject headings) in search boxes
• Use MeSH 2022 to browse search terms or to build a search strategy with subject headings

Managing Results:

• Email, print or copy and paste citations
• View/download PDFs
• Copy and paste permalinks
• Export in RIS format to EndNote (desktop)
• Direct export to EndNote web

About PubMed:

• Access through the library's databases (will have Check for full text @ TX State option for articles)
• Access the public version after graduation
• Provides MeSH database to find medical subject headings 
• Provides Clinical Queries tool to search clinical or disease-specific topics; results for clinical studies can be filtered by Therapy, Clinical Prediction Guidelines, Diagnosis, Etiology, or Prognosis and the scope of the results can be Broad or Narrow.  

Search Strategies

Search Box:

• Enter search terms (keywords or subject headings or a combination of both)
• PubMed will “and” terms automatically
• Truncation and phrase searching disable automatic mapping to MeSH terms; use with caution

Clinical Queries tool

• Enter search terms in search box
• Filter results for Clinical Studies by selecting a category (Therapy, Prognosis, Diagnosis, Etiology, Clinical Prediction Guidelines) and selecting the Scope (Broad or Narrow)

Managing Results

In a record:

• Use Cite, format AMA style from drop down and copy citation to paste in Word document
• Use Cite to download ,nbib to import directly into EndNote (desktop)
• Use Send To and select Citation Manager to create a file to import directly into EndNote (desktop)
• Email records (works in public version only)
• View/download PDF by accessing full text article when available

On a results page:

• Select records and use Send To and select Citation Manager to create a file to import directly into EndNote (desktop)
• Email selected records (works in public version only)

      Free database accessible after graduation.

Search Strategies:

• Search one or two fields to begin
• Try starting with Body Part drop down and Index Test Name or select a type of Index Test from the drop down
• Add another term if too many results
• Make a search broader by removing terms if too few results are found

Managing Results:

• Select relevant results then click Display Selected Records at the top of the webpage
• Email citations
• Save Results to import directly into EndNote (desktop)