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Faculty Overview of Evidence Informed Practice (EIP): a. PubMed

Tips & Techniques for Keeping up with Research

PubMed Search Example

Scenario: Your adult male patient has a history of high blood pressure and you're wondering if biofeedback is as effective as standard of care (beta-blockers) in lowering it.

Note:

PubMed is an international database from the National Library of Medicine/NIH; it has over 26 million citations to research articles published in medical and allied sciences journals.

Check out the other tabs in this box to see PICO and searching in action!

1st: Identify PICO elements as specifically as possible:

Patient Population (or Problem) Intervention (or Exposure) Comparison (if known) Outcome Measure(s)
adult males with hypertension biofeedback beta blockers

lower overall blood pressure level

2nd: Frame your clinical question using elements from your PICO:

Q. Is biofeedback as or more effective than beta blockers in lowering blood pressure in adult men?

PubMed search query: 

biofeedback AND (beta blocker* OR andrenergic beta-antagonists) AND (hypertension OR blood pressure)

Filters: Adult: 19+ years (Age); Male (Sex)

Explanation of PubMed search query:

The best database searches are combinations of logical keywords and subject headings.

Keywords: biofeedback; beta blocker*

Note: The asterix* after blocker tells Pubmed to look for both singular and plural forms.

MeSH terms (PubMed subject headings): andrenergic beta-antagonists; hypertension (disease aspect); blood pressure (physiological aspect)

Why use parentheses in the search? (Think algebra.) Parentheses tell a database how to run a search correctly when it includes both AND and OR; PubMed reads the search above as: first find citations with either or both terms within each set of parentheses, and then combine these results with the rest of the search, i.e. the biofeedback aspect.

Filters/Limits: PubMed's filters appear on the left sidebar after you run the search; click Show more filters at the bottom of the left sidebar if you don't see the ones you need.

PubMed's Clinical Queries Feature

Learn how Clinical Queries can make your life easier!

MeSH Searches in PubMed

 

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