TR5104: Research Methods in Health Science

PubMed is highly utilized by all types of health care practitioners because it's one of the best places to find original (primary) research studies. PubMed is the major biomedical and life sciences database and it is HUGE (over 22,000,000 citations), so it takes some practice to get the best results.

Searching PubMed:

1. Try to think of how a researcher would describe your topic in choosing your search terms (keywords). This method is efficient, and can work well when you're not concerned about capturing all/most of the relevant research on a particular topic.


2. If you have too many results, set (additional) filters; for too few results use additional synonyms or broader search terms. Aim for 10-99 results. Note: Once you set filters (limits), they stay set for future searches until you remove them.


3. Remember to look up your terms in the MESH database, but come back to the PubMed search screen to run your search.


4. Once you set limits (filters), they stay set for future searches unless removed.


5. After opening the citation of an article, look for the maroon colored "Check Bastyr Online" button, to access to full text of the article.

The National Library of Medicine (NLM/NIH) produces PubMed, the major biomedical and life sciences database; it's one of the best places to find high-quality research studies and is therefore highly utilized by all types of health care practitioners. PubMed, which incorporates MEDLINE, is HUGE (over 30,000,000 citations and counting), so it takes some practice to get the best results.

Basic Keyword Searching

Watch this video for a quick overview.

Subject Terms

Subject terms are controlled (preferred) vocabulary similar to tagging, they are assigned by professionals. Searching using subject terms help you find all of the documents about a topic even if the document doesn't contain the words you're searching for.* For example, if you were looking for articles about "cats" using just keywords, you might not find an article that only used the word "feline". Searching with subject terms retrieves any article about that subject regardless of the specific words authors use.

*Because of variations in indexing (assigning subject headings), your search may still miss some articles on your topic.

 Using subject terms usually improves the relevance of search results.