Pratt Guides: Point of Care Resources: Point of Care Resources

What are Point of Care Resources?

Point of care resources offer highly-structured clinical decision tools that allow information on diagnosis and treatment to be quickly retrieved at the point of care. These resources synthesize and evaluate the most relevant evidence from the primary clinical literature, and they include detailed summaries of a wide range of conditions and interventions, rationale for patient care decisions, and links to original studies.

Which Point of Care Resources are Available?

DynaMed
Dynamed is a clinical reference tool created by physicians for use at the point-of-care. App version is also available for Android and Apple iOS devices.

Natural Medicines
Resources founded by healthcare providers and researchers to provide high-quality, evidence-based information about complementary and alternative therapies. Formerly Natural Standard and Natural Resource Comprehensive Database, now merged.

TRIP Database
TRIP database is a free clinical search engine for you to find and use high-quality clinical research evidence. In addition to research evidence clinicians can search across other content types including images, videos, patient information leaflets, educational courses and news.

UpToDate (onsite only)
UptoDate is an online medical reference for quick, point-of-care information. Available onsite only. Available as an app for Android and Apple iOS, click here for details.

You can contact UpToDate's End-User Customer Support by emailing customerservice@uptodate.com or by calling 1-800-998-6374 or +1-781-392-2000 Monday through Friday, 7am - 9am (UTC-04:00).

Searching for Guidelines

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Guidelines
American College of Physicians
The goal of ACP is to provide clinicians recommendations using the best available evidence, state when there is no evidence and help clinicians deliver the best health care possible.
ECRI Guidelines Trust (requires free registration)
This website is a practical resource to review existing clinical practice guidelines in a centralized location. Key components of the site include links to full-text guidelines and an assessment function that explores the rigor and trustworthiness of each document. This website was built by the team that developed and maintained the AHRQ National Guideline Clearinghouse, which is no longer available.
PubMed
Perform a search, go to the filter Article Type and check the 'Practice Guideline' box. If not visible, click 'Additional filters' on the left and choose 'Practice guideline', close and go back to the search. Check the 'Practice Guideline' box in the filter section on the left.
TRIP Database
TRIP Database claims to have one of the largest collection of clinical guidelines and you can filter them by country. Do a keyword search from the homepage. On the Results page under Filter By, click on the region you want under 'Guidelines'.
World Health Organization (WHO) Guidelines
The development of global guidelines ensuring the appropriate use of evidence represents one of the core functions of WHO. Recommendations that can impact upon health policies or clinical interventions are considered guidelines for WHO purposes.