Available online at: http://www.columbia.edu/~mvp19/cc.htm
Most
medical libraries use either the OVID or PubMed
interfaces to MEDLINE. PubMed has several
features that are advantageous for clinicians.
Learning
Objective: To make
clinicians familiar with the features of PubMed, an
important interface to the medical literature.
The
features that distinguish PubMed include:
Free access from any Web browser (no licensing
required)
“Related articles” function that allows the user to
broaden their search
“Cubby” that allows users to store searches for
later use
“Clinical Queries” filters that increase relevance
to clinicians (demonstrated in a separate tutorial)
In
this tutorial, we will introduce the Clinical Queries feature which allows you
to search quickly for clinically relevant papers. We will also show you
how to save your searches online.
Online
Tutorial:
Overview
How to access Clinical Queries
What they give you that PubMed
(Plain) or OVID do not
How to save your searches forever
The Search:
Go to PUBMED, conveniently located at www.pubmed.gov
On the left hand side, click on “Clinical Queries”
Scroll down to the section that lists the types of
questions available. The most common are “Diagnosis” and “Therapy”
Select “Diagnosis”
In the search box, type in search terms (e.g.
Asthma AND Montelukast) – the “AND” must be
capitalized
Start off with a “Narrow, Specific” search -à Click
“Go”
How many hits did you get? Write this number
down.
Hit the “Back” button and now click on “Broad,
Sensitive” search à Click “Go”
How many hits now?
The
problems with Medline in the past have been that many of the articles are not
clinically relevant, that often you get too many or not enough hits. PubMed Clinical Queries tries to get around that.
Here’s how….
Advantages of Clinical Queries
In about the middle of the screen, you can see a
“Details” tab à Click it
In the text box are the details of your search
strategy. The key thing to notice is that YOUR keywords are in the box
but grafted on are additional terms that an invisible librarian has fused to
your terms. These additional terms are what limit the results to clinically
relevant studies.
The terms vary by question type (Harm, Prognosis,
Therapy, Diagnosis) and by whether you want a
specific or sensitive answer. Usually in clinical care, we want the
specific answer.
To compare how the “Details” vary by study, have a
look at the Filter Table: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query/static/clinicaltable.html
MyNCBI
MyNCBI is the name for an area of Pubmed
where you can store your own searches indefinitely. Let’s learn how to
use it.
Do the first 9 screens of the mini-tutorial at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/pubmed_tutorial/m4101.html
This online tutorial explains how to register and use
the Cubby.
Perform a search on any topic that you might come
back to in a year’s time. Notice that when the results are displayed, you
now have the option to “Save Search” up on the top right. Click on that
“Save Search” link.
On the left-hand side, click on the link that says
“MyNCBI”. It will take you to a list of your
saved searches. You may have to sign in first.
Accessing Articles by PubMED
ID Number (PMID)
Every pubmed abstract has
a unique number listed at the bottom; if you know this number you can
instantly access the abstract
In the main PubMed search
box, type in the following number and click “Go”: 15385657
Google Scholar
Now try this: go to Google Scholar, a version
of Google that searches only scientific literature. www.scholar.google.com
Type in “Croup” into the main search box. How is the search result different from what you get in PubMed? In Google, the main page?
Click on "Cited By" underneath one of the citations.
Click on "Advanced Scholar Search" just to the right of the search button
Go back to the Scholar Main page --> Click on "Scholar Preferences"
--> See the Library Links section? Click on "What's This?"
What
you’ve accomplished:
MyNCBI
is there for you any time you’re near an Internet-enabled computer. Just
sign in and you can re-run the literature searches you have stored there.
You can store:
References to single articles
Stems to be combined with new searches:
E.g. if you store the search for RCT, this can be
combined with any new topic as demonstrated above
Searches that you run on an ongoing basis.
Clinical
Queries are a better way of searching MEDLINE with built-in improvements to
your keyword searches
Google
Scholar is a wonderful, fast way of getting to medical literature.
If
you have questions on the subject matter, contact Martin Pusic at: mvp19@columbia.edu .
Maria
Kwok MD
Martin
Pusic MD