Finding evidence-based primary care information used at the point-of-care can be challenging with the amount of resources available. The database, First Consult, provides essential information needed for point-of-care diagnosis and treatment.  There are three main components of this database: Medical Topics, Differential Diagnosis, and Procedures.  

There are over 700 medical topics with easy-to-use navigation to quickly find the information you need.  Users can click on the navigation menu options like Background, Diagnosis, Treatment, etc., to directly go to the needed information.  First Consult also has citation links to the original articles, making it simple for the user to see where the evidence is in the literature.   

First Consult contains a Differential Diagnosis tool making it easy for the user to compare various diagnoses for a symptom.  The topic's possible diagnoses are set up as a grid, divided by age.  First Consult also highlights conditions which should be ruled out urgently because of their potential dangers.  

Another tool available are the Procedures.  Procedures have the same easy-to-use navigation as the Medical Topic but are laid out to assist the user step-by-step n performing a procedure.  There are often multimedia links available as an extra reference to view the procedure.    

First Consult can be found in VCU Libraries' Databases A-Z under the letter 'F' or on your iPhone or iPad with the free First Consult App.