Fig. 60.1
PubMed Clinical Queries Clinical Study Categories . Reprinted with permission from National Library of Medicine
Handheld-Mobile Access : http://pubmedhh.nlm.nih.gov/ mobile accessible website, also available as an iOS iPhone App or as a Google Play Android App. Additional National Library of Medicine mobile apps are available: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mobile/
Search Tips : Search using the phrases that pop up.
Create a phrase to try: PTSD drug treatment OR drug treatment PTSD
Try several search approaches until you find what you need; check article titles.
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Behavioral pharmacology stress disorder* [truncate using * for disorders, disordered]
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Behavioral pharmacology [account for language/spelling differences]
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Try using the Related Citations feature as well—gives you additional options (Fig. 60.2 ).
Fig. 60.2
PubMed Clinical Queries Clinical Study Categories. Reprinted with permission from the National Library of Medicine
Search using the important or most specific concept first:
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Atypical antipsychotics PTSD
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PTSD treatment AND (sertraline OR fluoxetine) use AND or OR to combine concepts as needed.
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Try several approaches for comprehensiveness: PTSD AND sertraline OR PTSD AND fluoxetine
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Tutorials : http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/pubmedtutorial/020_570.html http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK3827/#pubmedhelp.Medical_Genetics_Search_Filte or http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK3827/#pubmedhelp.Is_there_anything_special_for Many medical libraries have created their own YouTube clinical queries tutorial clips.
Notes: This is a reliable and powerful tool on a mobile device. More mobile applications are available from the NLM http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mobile/index.html
PubMed Health—Free From the US National Library of Medicine
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Description : PubMed Health is a free resource that helps the entire healthcare team from health professionals to patients and families find clinical effectiveness research. PubMed Health includes an online database gathering together systematic reviews that can help determine whether a treatment method works, weigh the benefit or harm of the intervention, and show how much is still unknown about a type of care—PubMed Health answers the question, what works? PubMed Health contains systematic reviews from the last 10 years that focus on health interventions, diagnosis, diagnostic tests, policy, and public health. They are selected from DARE Reviews, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and the Health Technology Assessment (HTA) systematic reviews in partnership with international HTA agencies (Fig. 60.3 ).
Fig. 60.3
PubMed Health Launch Point Reprinted from US National Library of Medicine
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Handheld-Mobile Access : There is no app for PubMed Health; rather the website is mobile friendly and enables mobile, handheld searching.
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Search Tips : Keep your mobile searches brief and specific. For example, search implementation AND team* AND quality improvement AND diabetes; keep it simple and direct. Use common or likely specific phrases that identify your topic: quality improvement AND routine diabetes care. Build the search one concept at a time; start with the most specific words/phrases for your need, i.e., if routine care is what you seek, say that and not healthcare. If you need quality improvement team-based articles, then use that: quality improvement team* (use the * to truncate and pull the plural, teams). If that retrieves too many citations to manage, try using only words appearing in the title: quality improvement AND diabetes[title] .
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Tutorial : http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nichsr/outreach.html brings you to multiple resources for health services researchers.
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Notes: PubMed Health contains what is called Grey Literature, that is, systematic reviews, evidence reports, guidelines, technology assessments, meta-analyses, etc. published outside formal publisher channels, by government, nonprofit, hospital, or academic entities. Peer reviewed for the most part, yet not commercially published.
MedlinePlus 
Free from the National Library of Medicine
Free from the National Library of Medicine- a.
Description : MedlinePlus is the National Library of Medicine’s website and knowledge portal for patients, families, and clinicians. It contains reliable, up-to-date information about diseases, conditions, and wellness issues in accessible, easily understood language. MedlinePlus offers authoritative information on the latest treatments, drugs, or supplements, along with dictionaries, medical videos, and illustrations. As well, it links to the latest medical research and clinical trials.
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Handheld-Mobile Access : There is no app for MedlinePlus; rather the website is mobile friendly and enables mobile, handheld searching.
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Search Tips : Search the disease or condition first: breast cancer treatment to see what resources and information portals are generally available. Next if one is specifically seeking clinical trials for metastatic breast cancer, then search specifically: clinical trials for metastatic breast cancer .
The resources of the entire National Institutes of Health and associated US health-related agencies are connected to MedlinePlus, including substantial information on the entire range of drugs of abuse: crystal meth, LSD, marijuana, and others.
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Tutorial : http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/training/trainers.html takes users to an array of training resources. The most useful is the 2.5-min video overview, http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/tour/tour.html
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Notes: MedlinePlus is actually available to add to electronic health records (EHRs). You can request your EHR managers to add MedlinePlus for EHRs to your local EHR. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/connect/overview.html. Interestingly, 40 % of MedlinePlus usage is by clinicians. Put it in your toolbox!
HTA—CRD—DARE Databases Free from the University of York
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Description: The UK University of York Centre for Research and Dissemination, CRD, offers (free-of-charge) three databases to the world’s clinicians and researchers. The CRD databases: DARE, NHS-EED, and HTA, are updated daily, providing clinicians access to thousands of quality assessed systematic reviews, economic evaluations, and summaries of ongoing technology assessments/systematic reviews.
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The DARE (Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness ) contains over 30,000 reviews of systematic reviews—grading the methods, quality, evidence, and relevance of each review. Recently the funding was stopped for these important “reviews of reviews.” This shouldn’t deter you from using them over the next several years. There is value in reading them, as they thoughtfully critique the reviews, thus providing readers with knowledge on what to look for when scrutinizing reviews on their own. Learning to quickly recognize good and bad systematic reviews saves time and clinical errors.Related posts:
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