LibGuides: Public Health: Find the Evidences

When You Cannot Find Enough Evidence

REMEMBER: Not every PICO will have an article.

Therefore, you will need to think critically and decide what information is the most important to find for your question.

You have flexibility in choosing a topic for your paper	Design your PICO around the available evidence
Re-examine your search terms	Broad your search by adding more synonyms
Consider using similar or related populations, interventions, or outcomes	Determine is the information you have could answer your question

PubMed This link opens in a new window PubMed citations may link to full-text articles or books. This free database includes MEDLINE (searchable using MeSH), full-text biomedical and life sciences journals, and books.
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Clinical Queries

PubMed Clinical Queries quickly find evidence without performing a full literature search.

1. Access the database

2. Under “Find”, select Clinical Queries

3. Enter the term

4. Select one of the five categories in the Filter

Etiology - Search terms related to cohort studies and risk.
Diagnosis - Search terms related to diagnosis, specificity or sensitivity.
Therapy (default choice) - Search terms related to clinical trials, controlled trials, random allocation, and therapeutic use.
Prognosis - Search terms related to prognosis, cohort studies, follow-up studies, incidence, and prediction.
Clinical Prediction Guides - Uses language related to validation, observer variation, predictive value, and scoring systems.

5. Determine one of the scopes:

Broad - Sensitive search – includes relevant citations but probably less relevant; will retrieve more (default)
Narrow - Specific search – will get more precise, relevant citations but less retrieval

CINAHL This link opens in a new window Specifically designed for nursing students. Includes journals and reference materials, streaming video for common procedures, peer-reviewed nursing articles, and more.
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1. Access the database

2. Select Advanced Search

3. Check the “Evidence-Based Practice” filter (under Publication on the right) to limit the results to:

3. Make the selections for the type of study you are looking for

For:

Select the appropriate filter in the “Publication Type”

For:

Use a keyword search

Add “AND” to the search with the words of the studies.

MEDLINE This link opens in a new window MEDLINE provides a selected collection of citations for articles published in journals approved by the National Library of Medicine. This database is a subset of PubMed.
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1. Access the database

2. Select Advanced Search

3. Check the “EBM Reviews” filter (under Publication on the left) to limit the results to:

4. Make the selections for the type of study you are looking for

For:

Select the appropriate filter in the “Publication Type”

For:

Use a keyword search

Add “AND” to the search with the words of the studies

MeSH = Medical Subject Headings

It is a controlled organization of terms in PubMed, MEDLINE, CINAHL, and Cochrane Databases
MeSH headings are assigned by librarian specialists at the National Library of Medicine
MeSH terms are applied after a librarian has read the article
The MeSH headings tell you what the article is about, saving you time
MeSH is updated yearly, therefore, new articles will not have yet, been assigned a MeSH. Therefore you must search with both keywords and MeSH, this search will capture all of the articles you are looking for