How to search

Exact phrase search

Use inverted commas to search an exact phrase. For example, “Needle and syringe programmes” will only return documents containing that exact phrase.

Wildcard search *

To include a wider range of forms of a word, use the ‘wildcard’ symbol *

For example: searching on clinic* will return documents including the words clinician, clinical, clinic. 

Acronyms, alternative spellings and plurals

Acronyms are automatically searched. For example: if you type COPD the search engine will also automatically search for ‘chronic obstructive pulmonary disease’.

Alternative spellings are automatically searched. For example: ‘paediatric’ and ‘pediatric’.

Plurals are automatically searched. If you search for pregnancy, it will automatically find pregnancies as well. 

Relevance

The most relevant results appear at the top of search. Relevance takes into account:

• How frequently the search terms appear
• Where search terms appear in the documents
• The type of documents, based on the relative hierarchy of evidence
• The date of publication of the document.

Accreditation mark

An accreditation mark next to results is a recognised sign of high-quality processes used to produce guidance and advice.

Find out more about NICE accreditation

Search results and links

The search result title links to the original source material.

If you see “read summary”, it links to a summary page on NICE Evidence search which gives more detail about the document.

The search result also includes:

• the name of the source
• the document date
• the information type.

Click the name of the source or the information type to limit your results to that source or type of information.

Sorting

The default setting sorts results by relevance. You can also choose to display them ordered by date – with the most recent at the top.

Filters

Use the filters on the left-hand side of the search results to refine your search.

Filter by:

• evidence type
• areas of interest
• accredited
• sources
• medicine names
• date

Available options under evidence type and areas of interest are automatically displayed. Click on the other filter categories to open those lists of available options. Click one of the options to apply the filter to your search results.

Select multiple filters

You can select more than one option within a filter:

• choose your first option
• click on the filter title again to open out the list of options a second time.

You can also apply any number of different filter values. For Illustration:

• select ‘quality indicators’ and ‘guidance’ from evidence type
• select ‘NICE’ and ‘SIGN’ from sources.

This gives you quality indicators and guidance search results from either NICE or SIGN.