MW5106: A Survey of Research Methods

You had an introduction to PubMed during your Intro. to Epidemiology class last fall.  If you haven't been using it much since then, you could probably use a refresher. 

Further on in this tutorial, I'll demonstrate how to use the MeSH database and Filters to limit to specific study types (this skill correlates to your upcoming assignments in this course).

PubMed (Medline) is highly utilized by all types of health care practitioners because it's one of the best places to find original research studies. PubMed is HUGE (over 21 million citations; up to 4 thousand new citations daily) and it takes some practice to get the best results.

Two basic ways to search 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 results from your keyword search don't seem relevant or you retrieve too many (or too few) hits, try using PubMed's medical subject headings, or MeSH; the MeSH Database, linked under the PubMed search box, allows you check for appropriate MeSH terms. 

Depending upon your results, you may also want to try using some of the advanced tips you'll learn about in following video.

Note: Be sure to access PubMed from MyBu>Library>Databases, or from one of our LibGuides (like this one!), to get all of the full-text articles the BU library provides.

Search techniques covered in this video:

Finding subject Headings using the MeSH search (Medical Subject Heading Search).

Using MeSH terms in your search using Search Builder, or just adding them to the search bar.

Remember, you can combine subject headings and keywords - particularly if there isn't a subject heading for one part of your PICO - then you have to use a keyword to express that concecpt.