Conducting a Search in Medline

PowerPoint slides and Medline search by Angelique Roy, University of Toronto Libraries

Presentation by Sandra Kendall and Carla Hagstrom

Prepared for TAAAC, Sept.-Oct., 2015

Adapted from a presentation by Robyn Butcher, Family & Community Medicine, University of

Toronto

Sample Question

Your hospital wants to implement a policy of placing all HIV positive patients on INH prophylaxis therapy. You have been asked to do a review to see if that is successful in preventing tuberculosis, in particular, in other African countries.

PICO

• P—HIV positive in African countries

• I—INH prophylaxis therapy

• C—N/A

• O—Decreased rates of tuberculosis

Answerable Question: In African countries does INH prophylaxis therapy help reduce the rates of tuberculosis among HIV positive patients?

Search Strategy: Pulling out Main Concepts

• Pull the main concepts from your question In African countries does INH prophylaxis therapy help reduce the rates of tuberculosis among HIV positive patients?

Getting started

• Log into Ptolemy • Click on the Gerstein link on the left side of the

page

Conducting a Search in Medline

• Go to the Gerstein Science Information Centre homepage

• Under Major Resources select Medline

• Select Ovid Medline (R) from 1946 to the most recent date

Understanding Medical Subject Headings

• MeSH is the controlled vocabulary thesaurus of the National Library of Medicine and is used to search for medical information and literature in Medline

• These terms are arranged in an alphabetical and hierarchical

structure • When conducting your search in Medline, always ensure to click

the box marked “Map Term to Subject Heading”

Example: Keyword=cancer

MeSH=neoplasms

Conducting a Search in Medline • Once you have entered Medline, type your first search term in the Enter

keyword or phrase bar

• Remember: Map your term to its Subject Heading

• Read the Scope Note which provides a definition of the Subject Heading

• Select the linked Subject Heading for HIV positive, which is HIV Infections

The Scope Note will look like this:

• Click on “Previous Page” to return to your Subject Headings List • Now click on HIV Infections to view the Tree • This shows the hierarchical structure of this Subject Heading

Click “Continue”

Click “Continue” again

Now enter your next search term

Select the appropriate MeSH Heading and read the Scope Note

Complete the process as before and enter your next search term

Complete the process as before and enter your next search term

Now that you have searched for all of your terms you can combine them with “and” to narrow your results

You will see that you have 151 results after combining your search terms with “and”

At this point you can apply limiters

After applying limiters, you will now have 14 results

HIV Infections or HIV? • You have already searched HIV Infections • Now search HIV

Combine HIV Infections with HIV using “or”

Combine this search result with the other three terms of your question using “and”

Note that after you have once again applied your limiters, you will retrieve the same number of results as your HIV Infections search

• Scroll down to view your results • You can customize your display to show Citations, Abstracts and

Subject Headings

Retrieving Full Text

Click on the “Get it UTL” link

• You will be redirected to a page prompting you to visit the journal website

• Copy the article title by highlighting it and pressing Ctrl + C

• Paste the article title in the search bar by pressing Ctrl + V • Select “Search by Article title”

You will now see your search results

Click on the Download link to retrieve the full-text PDF of the article