Advanced Searching In Pub Med

Advanced Searching in PubMed Robin Featherstone Clinical Medicine Librarian [email_address]

Before we begin...

Use the Advanced search to access:

- Search History

Limits

Home

Agenda – 5 Scenarios, 5 Tools

The Comprehensive Search

Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)

The Clinical Question

Clinical Queries

The Regular Update

E-mail updates

The Precise Search

Single Citation Matcher

The Rush Job

Pubget

Search Scenario #1: The Comprehensive Search*

You have to find EVERY article on a particular topic

You are assisting a research team or are writing a thesis

* Consider attending the research workshop, “Smart Searching for the Health Sciences” on Nov. 20 th from 9:30 to 11:30 am

Comprehensive Search Strategies

Search more databases than just PubMed

Set up a RefWorks* (or similar product) account to manage your citations

Design a search strategy that can be reproduced

Test your strategy to make sure you retrieve the right articles

Use both keywords and subject headings

* Consider attending the research workshop, “Advanced RefWorks” on Nov. 18 th from 12:30 to 2:00 pm

Scenario

You are hired by a faculty researcher who is conducting research on hearing loss in AIDS patients. They ask you to find every article published on the subject.

Exercise

Spend about two minutes to conduct a quick search on the topic: AIDS and hearing loss

Search Scenario #2: The Clinical Question

You need to answer a question quickly at the point-of-care

You need to find information to answer a particular patient’s question

Clinical Question Strategy

Use Clinical Queries to find the best studies to answer your question

Enter your keywords and select the type of question that you want to answer

Scenario

A patient with rotator cuff tendinitis asks if you know of any new therapies that would be safe to try.

Exercise

Use Clinical Queries to find some new studies on treatments for rotator cuff tendinitis

Search Scenario #3: The Regular Update

You want to stay up to date on the latest publications, but don’t have time to search everyday

Regular Update Strategy

Start an account with PubMed (MyNCBI)

Set up your search to run automatically and the results sent to your email

Scenario

You’ve been seeing a lot of patients recently with rotator cuff tendinitis and would like to stay up to date on the most recent publications about treatments

Exercise

Register for an account with My NCBI

Return to your PubMed search on rotator cuff tendinitis

Select “Save Search”

Name your search and select “Save”

Set up your e-mail update preferences

Search Scenario #4: The Precise Search

You just want one article

You’re searching for items from a reference list or for a particular article that someone mentioned to you

Precise Search Strategy: Single Citation Matcher Enter as much information as you can and PubMed will find the closest matching article(s)

Scenario

Your preceptor asks you to read an article in the journal Lung about a respiratory syndrome affecting survivors of the World Trade Center disaster. They can’t recall anything more about the article.