Medical Literature Search Strategies
- Conducting a Literature Search Using PubMedMedical College of Wisconsin Libraries
- PubMed: Basics of Searching (Begin Here)In this lecture, we'll focus on the most common search techniques and demonstrate how to use them in PubMed. Specifically, we'll discuss using the Boolean operators AND and OR to combine search terms, nesting to group similar terms, truncation to search for words with multiple
- PubMed: Filters and Field TagsIn this lecture, we'll discuss PubMed filters and field tags, looking at how they can be used to narrow and focus your results.
- PubMed: Identifying Search TermsThis lecture will cover strategies for identifying terms to include in your search, focusing on identifying search terms by scanning the results from a basic search, analyzing a few relevant articles, and using the MeSH database.
- PubMed: Search a PICO questionThis video demonstrates using PubMed to search a PICO question.
- Medline (EBSCO) Search Using MeSH TermsFor a complete search, you will need to use index terms. MEDLINE uses MeSH terms and this video will show you how to search with these on the EBSCO platform.
- Medline Seven Steps to the Perfect PICO SearchThis resource explains how to search EBSCO Medline with a PICO strategy.
- CINAHL Databases - Basic Searching TutorialThis tutorial demonstrates the basic searching features of the suite of CINAHL databases on EBSCOhost.
Literature Search Tips
Truncation
Use to find alternate endings of a word, or to find the plural form of a word. Many databases use an asterisk as a wildcard.
Example: Nutrition* = finds nutrition, nutritional, nutritionally, nutritionist, nutritionists
Boolean Operators
Most databases recognize the use of Boolean Operators, and it is usually recommended that you capitalize AND, OR and NOT for the database to recognize these terms as Boolean Operators.
- Medical Subject Heading Tree (MeSH)The National Library of Medicine MeSH link describes the subject heading organization and has a browser to assist in finding MeSH terms.
