Associate Director and Coordinator of Medical Education
Victoria Wagner
Contact:
Robert Wood Johnson Library of the Health Sciences
Subjects: Medical Education
Introduction
What is complementary (alternative, integrative, functional, holistic, lifestyle) medicine? The NIH's National Center for Complementary Medicine and Integrative Health provides an excellent overview.
As medical students, you are learning about the relationship between integrative and conventional medicine, the methodological issues that complementary and alternative medicine research faces, and how to evaluate the potential value and risks of these therapies.
This resource guide provides links to databases and appraisal tools to help you locate and assess research on these topics.
Finding Articles
- Cochrane Library: Complementary & Alternative Medicine topicsSearch for reviews, protocols, and clinical answers.
- PEDro: Physiotherapy Evidence DatabasePEDro database indexes clinical trials, reviews, and practice guidelines evaluating physiotherapy interventions. All trials in PEDro are rated for quality using the PEDro scale.
- Natural MedicinesThis database contains evidence-based information about dietary supplements, herbal medicines, and complementary and integrative therapies.
- PubMed Complementary Medicine filterThis search strategy was created using terms from the Alternative Medicine branch of MeSH and facilitates searching for subjects in the area of complementary and alternative medicine.
- Sports Medicine and Education IndexThis database is an index of scholarship and research on physical education, exercise, and athletic activities. Search with Subject Term: Alternative Medicine.
Appraising Articles
- Hierarchies of evidence applied to lifestyle Medicine (HEALM): introduction of a strength-of-evidence approach based on a methodological systematic review.Katz DL, Karlsen MC, Chung M, et al. Hierarchies of evidence applied to lifestyle Medicine (HEALM): introduction of a strength-of-evidence approach based on a methodological systematic review. BMC medical research methodology. 2019;19(1):178-178. doi:10.1186/s12874-019-0811-z
- HEALM: Hierarchies of Evidence Applied to Lifestyle MedicineAmerican College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) and the True Health Initiative convened a group of leading researchers in epidemiology and other health disciplines—to review strength of evidence (SOE) metrics and assess their application to the particular requirements of the lifestyle medicine domain. Informed by the systematic review results of SOE methods in current or recent use, HEALM will propose a new process for evaluating evidence that fills a gap for interventions or health behaviors relevant to long-term lifestyle and lifestyle medicine. The authors’ intent is to offer this tool for other researchers to test and validate, thus informing strength of recommendation conclusions and lifestyle medical practice statements.
- GRACE checklistThe GRACE checklist is a validated assessment tool for high quality observational studies of comparative effectiveness.
- GRADE: Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and EvaluationHandbook for grading the quality of evidence and strength of recommendations in research studies.
- Oxford Centre for Evidence Based MedicineCritical appraisal tools.
- PEDro ScaleThe PEDro scale helps to assess whether a clinical trial presents reliable and meaningful results for use in clinical practice.
- Risk of Bias Assessment toolsUniversity of Bristol's tools:
RoB 2: risk of bias in randomized trials
ROBINS-i: risk of bias in non-randomized studies of interventions
ROBINS-E: risk of bias in non-randomized studies of exposures - TREND checklistCDC's Transparent Reporting of Evaluations with Non-Randomized Designs checklist.