Web site designed and maintained by Chris Cairns  © SICS EBM Group 2004                                  

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CATmaker Tips

 

CAT maker is a commercially available critical appraisal tool. The SICS EBMG has a product licence fro CATmaker..

A lot of the appraisal techniques are self-explanatory. The CATmaker help menu is useful. However, there are a few tips that makes using CATmaker easier.

I'll use an example of a CAT on the website (Bernard, NEJM, 2002 in the cooling section); 

  • Create a folder for the topic. In this case 'hypothermia'

  • Within this folder create a folder for all the documents relevant to this paper. In this case 'Bernard, NEJM, 2002, CA.

  •   Open CATmaker and follow the instruction for whichever type of paper you are appraising. In this case 'therapy'

  • Start working your way through the various screens, filling in all the sections

  • After each page I recommend that you save the CAT as an unfinished kitten. This means that all your hard work will be preserved if there is a computer/software problem.

  • To save click on the drop down menu and select 'save as unfinished kitten'.

 

  • Save this in the file you created at the beginning. It will save it as a text fie titled newKIT. I've had some problems when I've tried to change the name of the file so I think the best policy is to keep the file name unchanged. This is why it is a good idea to create a new folder for each paper you review- it avoids confusion between several newKIT files

 

  • Once you have finished the CAT - save it as an unfinished kitten once again. This is so than you can go back and edit it with CATmaker at a later date. If you save it as a finished CAT you cannot  re-open it with the CATmaker software.

  • If you wish to go back and edit a finished kitten or complete a kitten you have saved previously then select load unfinished kitten from the menu. Select the kitten file from your hard drive.

 

 

  • Once finished and saved we need to edit our finished CAT. Unfortunately CAT maker has little editing facility. There is no cut or paste or spell-checker. The easiest way around this is to save the finished CAT as a webcat. Save this in your folder along with the Kitten.

 

 

  •  You can the open the web cat with microsoft explorer. This should auto format giving you nice tables and boxes. You can then edit with word or microsoft frontpage.

 

 

  • Once edited save two copies, one a web page and an other as a word document

  •  When finished you can submit your CATs to the website in  word and webpage format.

 

 

        Printer-friendly format of instructions

 

        If anyone has more hints and tips, please send them in and I'll put them on the site.

 

Chris Cairns 2003