Pubmed Clinical Queries (CQ) eliminates everything that isn’t evidence, like editorials or history, and lets you focus in on clinical research. It does that by using search hedges, or filters, that limit to a specific clinical study category and scope. Click here for more about the filters themselves
There are five filters to match 5 types of clinical questions: Etiology, Diagnosis, Therapy, Prognosis and Clinical Prediction Guidelines.
You can limit to a Narrow specific search or a Broad more sensitive search.
CQ also has a Systematic Review Filter and a filter for articles that focus on Medical Genetics. The default is All for Medical Genetics but you can limit to more specific topics.
When you find a good article there is an option to see “Similar articles.” If you chose those you will no longer be using the evidence filters of CQs but the algorithm can be really helpful
Click on the Advanced link under the PubMed search box.
In the top search box (called Add terms to the query box), enter one search term and add synonyms/related terms with the word 'or' between.
Then click the Add button.
Also in the top box (called Add terms to the query box), add your next search term, and add its synonyms/related terms with the word 'or' between.
Then click the button AND:
What PubMed will do is, in the second box (called the Query box), it will place your two sets of synonyms together with the word AND between them. It will automatically put parentheses around each set of synonyms so that it looks like this:
Now you can hit the Search button on the right to see your results!
View the following videos for more tips and strategies for searching the literature:
