Instructions

Read the case description of a patient suffering from a cold. Do the exercises to develop a Medline strategy to search for evidence-based answers to your clinical question. Finally, write your synthesis in English or Italian following the guidelines. 

Patient Case Description

You meet a family friend who has a bad cold. She is a 26 year-old female. She tells you her symptoms are cough and very blocked noses making it difficult to breathe through her nostrils and sleep at night. Her partner says she snored all night.She feels completely congested and is taking paracetamol. In the pharmacy this morning  she saw two anticongestants made by the same company under the brand 'Otrivine'. One is a saline solution and the second contains 'xylometazoline'. The pharmacist suggested you buy one. 'Which one should I choose?" she asks you. You decide to do a Medline search.

Steps for your Search Strategy:

1. Identify the problem and write a clinical question

2. Identify at least 8 key words that describe the problem using PICO

3. Conduct at least 3 different searches on Medline with different combinations of your key words (Save your searches to My NCBI on PubMed)

4. Find at least 3 relevant papers published in the last 10 years (2006-2016) (including one 'review')

Online Synthesis of Results

 Write a short 250 word synthesis in English or Italian of the 3 articles you found about nasal decongestants

(a) State the problem and your clinical query (1-2 sentences)

(b) Describe your search strategy, the key words you used, filters you applied, and number of results. (1-2 sentences)

(c) State what papers you selected. " e.g. I included 2 RCTs by Smith  (2010) and Ellis 20113) and one Review (2014) 

(d) Synthesise the evidence in your own words (3-4 sentences)

(e) Conclusion: Answer your clinical question

(f) Reference the papers professionally (minimum 3 papers) Copy and paste from your Mendele library. Your references are not included in 250 word count.

(g) Keep a back up copy on Word.