Background: The evidence base developed by, and relevant to, primary health care (PHC) is rapidly increasing. With the wealth of literature available, searchers trying to find PHCspecific citations can feel overwhelmed. Objectives: Flinders Filters and the Primary Health Care Research & Information Service collaborated to develop a search filter enabling efficient and effective retrieval of relevant PHC literature. Methods: Stage 1 involved developing a PHC Search Filter in the OvidSP Medline platform using a rigorous experimental methodology. The search filter was then translated for webbased 'one click searching' in PubMed during Stage 2. Stage 3 involved planning and implementing a mixed-methods evaluation. Results: The search filter sensitivity was 77.0% with a post hoc relevance assessment of 78.3%. Four months after its launch a mixed-methods study evaluated the PHC Search Filter. With 90 respondents, analysis of data from the online survey demonstrated overarching benefits and a positive response to the tool, and directions for further refinement of the PHC Search Filter. Discussion: Designing the PHC Search Filter followed an established method that ensures the tool offers a validated search strategy. Evaluation results suggest that the PHC Search Filter is a useful tool that is easy to navigate. Challenges for the Filter relate to access to full text articles, while challenges for the evaluation relate to the small sample size. Conclusions: The PHC Search Filter reduces the burden associated with literature searching, increases the value of the results that are received, and provides a useful resource to improve the likelihood of incorporating relevant evidence into policy and practice.
KeywordsPrimary health care, information storage and retrieval, information management, evidencebased practice
Key messages Promoting access to quality, relevant literature may help to encourage uptake of evidence to inform research, practice and policy development Search filters based on validated development methods increase the likelihood of quality retrievals of citations The PHC Search Filter retrieves citations from the unindexed and indexed sets of the PubMed database providing searchers with the emerging and established literature The PHC Search Filter is able to facilitate easier access to relevant primary health care literature for overwhelmed, time poor researchers, policy makers and practitioners Topic searches that are combined with a search filter should be regularly updated to ensure relevance to searchers' needs/interests are incorporated