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What is a Foreground Question?
Foreground questions are clinical questions that focus on the care of a specific patient or population and generally require a search of the primary medical literature and are best suited for the PICO (Patient/Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome) framework.
To answer these questions, search for high quality systematic reviews/meta-analyses and work your way down the evidence pyramid. See The Evidence Hierarchy for more information on levels of evidence.
Systematic Reviews
These sources are databases of systematic reviews, which combine similar studies to produce evidence-based recommendations and conclusions.
- Cochrane Library
Includes the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR)
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PubMed
Use the Systematic Review filter to limit results
Primary Literature
For primary literature, search PubMed or other literature databases.
PubMed
Largest North-American health journal databases that indexes 5000+ health journals from 1950 to now.
PubMed Clinical Queries
A specialized search box within PubMed for finding articles on clinical topics.
Health Sciences Databases List (Ebling Library)
A comprehensive list of health sciences databases available to you through UW-Madison.
Google Scholar
Restricts the results of a Google search to scholarly literature from governmental units, websites, academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.
Federated Search Engines
These resources provide access to a variety of types information like primary research, review articles, and guidelines about clinical topics.
Guidelines
These sites are sources of guidelines by major associations and the U.S. Government.
Population/Public Health
These sources offer information about public health topics and statistics.
Wisconsin
United States
- National Center for Health Statistics
Best site for US health stats
Global
What is a Background Question?
Background questions concern general knowledge. These types of questions generally have only 2 parts: A question root (who, what, when, where, how, why) and a disorder, test, treatment, or other aspect of health care. Often these questions can best be answered by using a textbook or consulting a clinical database, such as UpToDate or DynaMed.
Clinical Databases/Point of Care
These sources provide information about signs/symptoms, diagnosis, and treatments of medical conditions.
- BMJ Best Practice
Provides evidence-based summaries about a variety of clinical topics.
- Clinical Key/First Consult
Clinical key provides access to a variety of types of resources like books and articles and First Consult is a point of care resource with succinct clinical summaries.
- DynaMed
A point of care resource that provides evidence- based information on a wide variety of clinical topics in an easy to read bullet-point format.
- Essential Evidence Plus
A point of care resource with succinct evidence-based summaries that also provides access to systematic reviews and guidelines.
- Lexicomp
A point of care drug reference.
- UpToDate
A comprehensive point of care resource that provides information on pathophysiology, clinical conditions, and medications.
Review Articles (Clinical)
These sources all have review articles that provide evidence-based summaries about medical conditions, including clinical presentation, diagnosis, and treatment.
Textbooks
Listed below are textbooks of interest in a few areas of interest. To browse a list of textbooks by subject area, see our Health Sciences Books page.
Anatomy Texts
Basic Science Texts
Clinical Texts
Public/Consumer Websites
These sources are credible sources that can be used by the general public to find information about health and medical conditions.