This article introduced search methods for adverse effects of healthcare interventions in MEDLINE, EMBASE and CBM (Chinese Biomedical Literature Database). The search strategies included the selection of publication type and the determination of medical subject headings and keywords both in English and Chinese, which will help identify relevant reports.
In this paper, we introduce search strategies and methods of contraceptive evidence through two aspects of evidence-based medicine, namely, the application of evidence and the creation of evidence. We should make choices according to our objectives when we search clinical evidence. If we aim to apply evidence, we should sequentially choose different databases according to the quality of evidence and use accurate search terms to search relevant papers quickly; if we aim to create evidence, we should choose multiple related databases and use different search terms to retrieve relevant studies comprehensively. The sensitivity and specificity of the selected search terms can be identified according to our purposes and the number of the retrieved papers.