Module 2: question 3

There are many ways to garner information on a topic- but one must be clear about understanding what types of information are trustworthy. Most of us wold recognize that the "National Institutes of Health" is a reasonably trustworthy source, but a layperson might just thing the National Health Initiative is good source ( I made that up). Anyone can pay to have a website developed and push their own agenda - as well as make it look "official" these days so we must be very careful. I personally liked seeing what was available just doing a Google search, but I also recognize that I need to go to websites that lead to scholarly work. The National Clearing House is a familiar site to me because I have had to work on protocols before and needed to collect data from multiple sources to defend a position for why certain care processes should be adhered to. All of them are useful in one way or another- even if it just gives you an idea or link to pursue another search.

I think one could look for professional organizations and specialty groups to find further data on a topic. Interviews can always give one ideas for further exploration- but it is so easy to get at a significant amount of information with a few keystrokes these days. I remember the days of going to the library and pulling articles, copying them and ordering them in from other libraries! Fine tuning search skills is probably going to be the best way to decrease time wasted in finding irrelevant information and citations.