Searching PubMed to Answer Learning Issues

PubMed makes searching the journal literature relatively easy. It is best used to locate the most recent information on a learning issue topic and to find types of information that are only published in the journal literature.

 

Developed and maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Library of Medicine, PubMed is made up of over 34 million citations, covering life sciences, public health, behavioral sciences, animal sciences, chemical sciences, and bioengineering. It is updated daily, and contains records dating back to 1966. The developers are selectively adding earlier records, going back to the 1800’s.

 

Each student is expected to bring at least one journal article to one of the sessions for each of your future PBL cases. It’s worth taking some time to practice PubMed search techniques and methods for obtaining full-text articles now.

Note: Always enter PubMed through the library website’s Resources section to connect to UNMC’s full-text articles.

The first step in conducting a PubMed search is formulating your question. Please visit the UNMC video tutorial: Creating Your Search Strategy to learn how to: 1) create a concept table that lists your search concepts, and 2) use Boolean operators to focus your search.

Click here to open PubMed in a new window. You are possibly interested in what research has been published on stress and medical students.

We created a simple search using the lessons taught in the UNMC video tutorial: PubMed-Basic Searching. We used the AND Boolean operator to connect the two concepts. We also created a searchable phrase by using quotation marks: “medical students”. Using quotation marks around a multi-word phrase makes PubMed search the entire phrase, rather than separate individual keywords.

The search in PubMed ends up being:  “medical students” AND stress.

 

Review the results for appropriate citations. Check for full text by clicking on a citation title.

 

Click on the purple icons in the image below to see important hints about accessing articles from PubMed.

 

Continue searching for your other learning issues, and be prepared to share a full-text article during Tuesday’s session.

Next, you will explore how to request articles through Interlibrary Loan.