Medical searching Kazem Heidari. Reading in medicine Browsing Reading for fun of it Books and journals are used. Reading for information Approach

Medical searching

Kazem Heidari

Reading in medicine

• BrowsingReading for fun of itBooks and journals are used.

• Reading for informationApproach the literature answers for specific

questionFocused searching

• Reading for researchComprehensive view of the existing state of

knowledgeReviews (systematic) are used

Reading journals

• Browsing mode– Printed version is easier.

• Problem solving mode– Electronic version is easier.

Question

search

Answer

The better formulated your question is,

the more relevant your “answer” is likely to be.

TYPES OF QUESTIONS

• Background

• Foreground

Background and foreground questions

Background

Foreground

Experience with Condition

Five Information Sources Clinicians Must Use

1. Journals: general, specialized, and summary2. MEDLINE, EMBASE and/or other major

database service(s)3. Internet: search engines, directories,

government sites, etc.4. Textbooks (slowly changing factual

information)5. “Personal collection” to support routine

activities (e.g., personal specialty reprint collection)

Electronic Resources

• Databases

• Electronic textbooks

• Electronic journals – Free– Subscription services

Benefits of electronic resources

We focus on online rather than print products because they are

generally easier to search and more current than

print products

Search strategy

Search Strategy

• A systematic process used to find the most relevant information on a topic:

– Useful reference sources, – Select works appropriate for the

research need,– Locates information– Evaluates the relevance of the

information found

Principles are similarbut

Methods are different

Question

Question

Specify your search goalSensitive

Specific

Question


SpecificSelecting Database

Bibliographic

Value added

Question


SpecificSelecting Database

Bibliographic

Value added

Constructing the search strategy


Selecting the most important and relevant words



Broad searching



Broad searching

Investigating the results



Broad searching

Investigating the results Few results



Broad searching


Browse



Broad searching


Browse

Change the wordsChange databaseApply

Finding synonyms



Broad searching


Large amount of results



Boolean searchingLimit fields Search filters







Few resultsLarge amount of results









Change databaseApply

Databases

• Free• Not free OR• Prefiltered• Nonfiltered OR• Bibliographic• Fulltext

Medline

• By US National Library of Medicine

• over 11,000,000 citations of both clinical and preclinical studies.

• comprehensive coverage of medical journals and because it is readily accessible.

• American bias

Medline

Free of charge using• Pubmed

commercial vendorOVIDSilver Platter.

www.pubmed.com

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi

http://www.tums.ac.ir

http://diglib.tums.ac.ir/

EMBASE• Elsevier Science Publishers,

Netherlands• Type of Database: Bibliographic• Numbers of Journals: 3500• Bias: European in focus• Subject Coverage: Strong on

Pharmaceutical and Clinical Medicine• Overlap with MEDLINE estimated at

between 25 and 40%• 75% of References contain Abstracts

http://diglib.tums.ac.ir/

http://www.acpjc.org/

• ACP journal club– Prefiltered database– since 1991 – General purpose: select from the biomedical

literature articles that report original studies and systematic reviews that warrant immediate attention by physicians attempting to keep pace with important advances in internal medicine

http://www.acpjc.org/

• Trip database:– Allows users to rapidly and easily

identify high quality medical literature from a wide range of sources

http://www.tripdatabase.com

• Search in trip pic

EMBASE

MEDLINE

UNIVERSE OF BIOMEDICAL JOURNALS30,000

Grey Literature

Documents

Medical searching Kazem Heidari. Reading in medicine Browsing Reading for fun of it Books and journals are used. Reading for information Approach