Users' Guides to the Medical Literature: I. How to Get Started

CLINICAL SCENARIO You are a primary care physician inspired by a recent editorial in JAMA about lifelong learning.1 You decide to use some of the time you normally take for continuing medical education conferences for "practice-based education" tailored to your own practice. You begin by setting aside 2 hours every week to read about relevant clinical problems.It is now Friday morning and you have 2 hours to spend in the hospital library. You review a one-page list of questions you have generated from the patients you've seen in the prior week. Your questions include these: What should you tell a 33-year-old woman with migraine headaches who has asked for a prescription for sumatriptan after reading a magazine article about it? Should you be screening older men in your practice for prostate cancer? What should you tell the mother of a 6-month-old boy who had a febrile seizure about