PubMed indexes articles using controlled vocabulary, Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). The search engine uses automatic term mapping to to map your search to the appropriate MeSH term. You can see the MeSH terms for an article in Abstract view. To start searching, just enter your search terms in the basic search box. You can check how your search was mapped in the "Details" box on the right dashboard in the result set. Advanced search and MeSH search options are also available.
Searching for evidence-based medicine/nursing articles using CLINICAL QUERIES in the PubMed database
Clinical Queries within PubMed is designed for people who are looking for those few good articles that might help someone make an informed decision. It is designed for the busy working professional in the medical field. This is the database that is available in most hospitals and clinics for working professionals.
PubMed is on the open web for anyone to use it, however to get links to the maximum number of FREE full text articles you should access PubMed from the Otterbein library home page.
Choose Clinical Queries listed on the left side and drill down to SYSTEMATIC REVIEWS: In PubMed, Systematic Reviews cover a broad set of articles including: meta-analysis, reviews of clinical trials, evidence-based medicine, consensus development conferences and guidelines.
Capitalize the Boolean operator’s AND/OR/NOT between your keywords:
Cancer AND smoking
Depression OR Sadness AND women OR female
Abdominal pain NOT ectopic
Hand washing AND infection control
Carbonated beverages AND childhood obesity
Autism AND Vaccines
Use SPECIFIC subject terms like Myocardial Infarction not “heart attack”
Spell terms out don’t use acronyms like “COPD”
Limit the years or the search will search the entire database back to 1950.
PubMed comprises over 20 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. PubMed citations and abstracts include the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and preclinical sciences. PubMed also provides access to additional relevant Web sites and links to the other NCBI molecular biology resources.
PubMed is a free resource that is developed and maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), located at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
PubMed Quick Start Guide: Tips on how to search for clinical articles, systematic reviews and more.