 | SUMSearch 2 |  |
Searching: overview
1. Technical issues: preparing your browser, MyNCBI, and Scholar
2. Search strategy
General medical factoids
- Google is ok to use
- Example: What class of medicine is pioglitazone?
General medical questions
Use something similar to the
6S model. Note the sequence:
The basic concept of this model, that MEDLINE should be last, has been validated by
https://pubmed.gov/17082828 which concluded this strategy is not more thorough, but seems faster.
Drug questions
- Drug interactions. Use the interaction checker just below the search box on UpToDate's new search page
- P450 interactions. Use the tables at Indiana's Centers for Education & Research on Therapeutics (CERTs)
- Example: which beta-blocker should you avoid in patients on methadone?
3. Search terms are hard to use! Alternative approaches
The suggestions below assume you have use the 5S strategy and have a collection of relevant articles that you have culled from searching systematic texts, guidelines, etc.
Example of two RCTs of septic shock found from UpToDate: PMIDs 29490185,29347874 (
See the two RCTs at PubMed). Can you use these two citations in the three strategies below?
1. 'Termless' searching
2. Choose MeSH terms bases on the terms in the current articles you have found
3. PubMed vector searches ('Find related data' searches)
- Only available on the Legacy PubMed
- Example using two RCTs of steroids for sepsis (PMIDs: 29490185,29347874) (Not available on the new PubMed)
- Execute a 'Find Related Data' search in PubMed. The first two results are the same two articles. Is the third article relevant?
- Use PubMed's advanced search to repeat the Related Data search, but limit the results to those with random* in the title or abstract.
4. Cited reference searches
4. Example searches
Keeping up
Use an alert service rather than journal TOCs (except maybe the Annals and NEJM)
(you do not have to read everything that comes to you)
Clinical cases - an enjoyable and practiacal way to learn
