Research Guides: Occupational Therapy: OCTH 52403: Evidence-Based Clinical Reasoning

Librarian Office Hours

Summer 2025

Librarian:	Megan York
Where:	MULN 419/Teams
When:	by appointment only

Librarian:	Kay Strahan
Where:	UAMS Northwest Library Desk
When:	by appointment only

Introduction

This guide was created for OCTH 52403: Evidence-Based Clinical Reasoning. For basic research, please refer to the "Home" tab. For help with APA Styles, please see the "Additional Resources" tab.

If you need additional assistance, please feel free to reach out to your librarians, Megan York, MLIS (mayork@uark.edu) OR Kay Strahan, MSLIS, AHIP (kstrahan@uams.edu).

Getting Started

Patient/Population/Problem

Intervention or Exposure

Comparison

Outcome

Who are the patients or population?

What is the problem?

What is the intervention that is being introduced?

What is the population being exposed to?

What are we comparing the intervention or exposure to?

What is the outcome?

PICO Example Question:

What are the perceived barriers to successful breastfeeding, and how can occupational therapy interventions enhance breastfeeding outcomes?

P Breastfeeding individuals

I occupational therapy

C no intervention

O enhanced breastfeeding outcomes

There are many Boolean operators, but the three main ones are AND, OR, and NOT.

A brief breakdown:

AND: narrows your results and brings all your terms together.

Example: chocolate AND marshmallows AND graham crackers (this will only bring together things that includes ALL THREE terms)

OR: broadens your search; searches either terms

Example: chocolate OR marshmallows OR graham crackers (this will bring up articles that only feature ONE of the terms)

NOT: narrows your results; excludes terms

Example: (chocolate AND marshmallows) NOT graham crackers (this will bring up only articles that mention chocolate and marshmallows, but will not bring up articles that mention graham crackers)

Database Search Tips | MIT
This is a link to a guide on search tips by MIT and goes further into Boolean operators.

Zotero - Research Guide
This Research Guide is ALL THINGS Zotero! Put together to help you get the most out of the citation manager and make it easier for to compile citations.

Zotero Handout - UA LIbraries

Critical Appraisal Tools & Worksheets

CASP Checklists
The Critical Appraisal Skills Programme offer a number of free downloadable checklists to help you more easily and accurately perform critical appraisal across a number of different study types.
AMSTAR Checklist
AMSTAR stands for A MeaSurement Tool to Assess systematic Reviews. Uses of AMSTAR: 1) To develop and evaluate reviews; 2) To use as a guide to conduct of reviews; 3) To use as an aid to teaching about systematic reviews.
Center for Disease Control | TREND Statement
The TREND statement has a 22-item checklist specifically developed to guide standardized reporting of nonrandomized controlled trials.
Appraisal of Guidelines for Research & Evaluation (AGREE) II Instrument
The purpose of the AGREE II, is to provide a framework to: 1) assess the quality of guidelines; 2) provide a methodological strategy for the development of guidelines; and 3) inform what information and how information ought to be reported in guidelines. The AGREE II replaces the original instrument as the preferred tool and can be used as part of an overall quality mandate aimed to improve health care.
CATmaker
CATmaker is a computer-assisted critical appraisal tool, which helps you create Critically Appraised Topics (CATs), for the key articles you encounter about Therapy, Diagnosis, Prognosis, Aetiology/Harm and Systematic Reviews of Therapy.
Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Appraisal Tools
JBI’s critical appraisal tools assist in assessing the trustworthiness, relevance and results of published papers.

Other Helpful Resources

Students 4 Best Evidence (S4BE)
Whether you are training to be a doctor, nurse or other health professional, or you’re a school student thinking about studying medicine, S4BE Contributors pull together all the resources on EBH into one interactive space, where we hope you will find the right information for you and help you meet other like-minded students.
CEBM | Glossary
Authors: Katherine Law and Jeremy Howick Welcome to the CEBM Glossary. This is not a comprehensive glossary but it outlines some of the key terms that should be understood in relation to Evidence-Based practice.