Module 3: Searching for....

I have never been great at searching for reference articles. It is one of my least favorite things to do, next to writing scholarly papers (haha). I searched PubMed, Google, and the National Guideline Clearinghouse for information pertaining to tympanostomy tube after care, infection prevention, and water precautions.

PubMed had the most relevant information to my search. There were only 3 articles found relating to water precautions, and 33 relating to infection prevention. I had to weed through the abstracts in the 33 infection articles, because some of them had nothing to do with the topic I searched. I even got a few relating to cochlear implants in my search results.

National Guideline Clearinghouse did not have any information relating to water precautions. I did find 5 articles relating to infection prevention, but they were mostly directed at care of otitis media and otitis externa, not tympanostomy tubes.

Google returned about 36,200 results. The first result was a link to the Mayo Clinic page on ear tube care. I always find the Mayo Clinic website to have great information and handouts. I have printed many handouts from the Mayo Clinic for patients. Many of the search results from Google were patient specific, and opinions from lay people.

Google Scholar found about 842 results of articles since 2007. The articles returned regarding water precautions for ear tubes were mostly from the 1990s and early 2000s. This makes me wonder if my topic is even relevant.

PubMed and Google Scholar were the easiest for me to use, mostly because I was familiar with the technology. PubMed seemed to provide the most specific results. I was unable to find any relevant information to my topic of choice on the NGC website. I will stick with PubMed for researching articles, because I can import the references into EndNote. This step eliminates a lot of work when I write papers.