The Clinical Evidence Based Information Service (CEBIS) is available free to all UHCW staff.
Whether you have a question about the best treatment option for a particular patient, a difference of opinion with a colleague about the “best” approach to a clinical intervention or like to ensure that you are up to date on the latest evidence based research in your area – CEBIS has you covered.
Writing guidelines for UHCW? Find out more about our Guidelines service.
Finding evidence
We can carry out evidence searches to support your clinical decision making, service changes and practice improvements. We can't carry out searches if they are intended to support academic assignments. Visit our Training pages to find out how we can help you with academic work.
Supporting your clinical specialty
Whether it is setting up or attending journal clubs, to a presence at MDT sessions or even ward rounds to undertake “rapid searches” CEBIS can work to ensure that your Specialty has access to the most up to date and relevant clinical evidence when you need it.
Undertaking research
Writing a systematic review, research paper, or conference paper? CEBIS can help you to search the literature and find the evidence. For systematic reviews this would include creating search strategies, administrating the results, and applying inclusion and exclusion criteria.
Publishing your work
If you are going to write a Patient Information Leaflet, guideline, or standard operating procedure then come to us for the evidence you need to write it well. Need support with a literature search for an article you wish to submit to a journal or for a conference presentation? We can help there too.
Staying current
We can help you stay abreast of the latest research in your clinical area.
Talk to us about tailoring current awareness searches that best suit your needs and those of your team.
Case Study: Waiting times and visual outcomes in patients with macular holes.
The literature search and service evaluation confirmed that shorter waiting times result in a better visual outcomes and quality of life outcomes for patients. The research provided to the team by CEBIS was used to refine the priority of scheduling elective surgery and subsequent waiting times. The Senior Optometrist states that in the absence of CEBIS support “I would have tried to search for the information, but due to various constraints may not have conducted the search at all; we would therefore be less informed of the outcomes of our service. This would have had a negative impact on the quality of informative metrics used to guide patients about surgery.”
Get in touch
Submit a literature search request
Email us: CEBIS@uhcw.nhs.uk
Follow us on Twitter: @UHCW_CEBIS
Find out more about our Guidelines service.
Critical Appraisal tools
Once you've found the evidence you need, the next step is to appraise your papers and establish whether their methods - and results - could be applicable to the patients in your care.
The following Critical Appraisal tools and checklists are available to help you interrogate research studies and draw your own conclusions:
Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP)
University of Oxford, Centre for Evidence Based Medicine: Critical Appraisal Tools
Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) Checklists
If you are new to critical appraisal and would like some guidance on reading papers, training is available both from the CEBIS and Knowledge Skills Training teams within the library.