Skip to content

How to Easily Find Medical Literature You Need

 

Research can be a tedious process if you do not know where to get the information you require. When you are looking for medical literature you should access medical journals and other books and sites that have peer-reviewed sources and regular publishing. Such information is necessary for medical practitioners like clinicians, medical scientists, and other healthcare staff including those who want to particularly research about certain aspects of medicine like neuropathy and cardiology. The quality of the sites you access determines the credibility and quality of the information you get. This is how to easily find medical literature you need:

 

Use Keyword Searching

 

The easiest way to search for the right medical literature you need is using specific keywords to increase your chances of accessing all the resources that have the exact information you are looking for and any other related information. Using a keyword, you can use the term that according to you is the best to describe what you are looking for and that term which you believe is the best used in a particular site to describe the information you want. This type of search can help you retrieve what you enter although you can also use synonyms and other variations to expand your reach. This way you can retrieve all the relevant information on the subject you are researching. Keywords can also make it easy for you to search for information on specific medical-oriented sites. Based on the information on this website, you can use keywords to search sites that are specifically known to provide credible medical information to reduce the amount of time and labor you use to research. Such sites should have a high volume of well-written and formated medical articles based on timelines to meet your research goals. The articles you review on these sites should not be outsourced rather they should be reviewed by internal authors who are qualified and dedicated to the subjects they write about. As such these resources should have uniform formatting and should not contain any submission errors.

 

 

Use Subject Searches

 

A subject search is synonymous with a controlled vocabulary search. This is a standardized search that involves you searching information based on your subject of interest in medical sites that have hierarchically listed information on the main concepts of the subject you are researching. Based on the database you are searching you can play around with the vocabularies to get more accurate results. This hierarchical organization of content can enhance your search by allowing you to narrow down broad concepts in a manner that is consistent with the framework in the particular database you are searching. The developers of such databases always determine the subject matter of an item before adding it to a catalog. This arrangement can help you retrieve the same information on the same concepts regardless of the terminology you use. This type of search is more convenient if you use PubMed, PMID, or PMCID. This way you will enter your ID in the search box of either of the sites and select either a single citation matcher if you have all the citation information. You can also select use related articles to access the relevant information.



 

Used an Advanced Search

 

An advanced search allows you to set limits or filters on your search for you to have more precise results. For instance, you can set the age limit, the language, sex, date of publication, and types of publication and also decide whether you want those that are peer-reviewed or review articles. The truncation and wildcard techniques are also a form of an advanced search that allows you to specify your results using the symbols; # and or *. The truncation symbol uses the root of the word you are searching followed by a symbol. For example, you can search pharm* to have such results as pharmacology, pharmacy, or pharmaceutical. The wildcard, on the other hand, gives you an opportunity to search multiple spellings of the word you are searching for. For instance, you can search sul*ur to get sulfur. Proximity operators are also a good strategy that can allow you to search more than two words in relation to each other.

 

Use the Boolean Operators

 

The boolean search can allow you to set specific relationships between your keywords as you search. The common operators to use are AND, NOT and OR. you can also use parentheses to make the relationship more clear. This search can help you access precise data and save your time.

It is easy for you to find the medical literature you need if you plan your research accordingly by identifying keywords and relevant subject searches. Identify all the synonyms and concepts you can use to get your target information and use the above strategies like boolean, advanced, keyword, and subject searches. Ensure you search the right databases.

 

 


Leave a Comment