Efficiently finding and using evidence to guide clinical practice and improve care.

Using evidence to guide patient care improves patient outcomes. However, the volume of clinical and scientific literature and demands on provider time make staying current challenging. Primary literature searching or using public search engines to answer clinical questions often results in low-quality or incorrect answers, potentially yielding suboptimal clinical care. This article describes systematic strategies for primary literature searching that can yield higher-quality results than an unstructured approach.