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Residents: Getting Started at UC San Diego: Search Tips & Tutorials

A guide for new clinical residents on the resources and services available at the UC San Diego Libraries.

 

This page has been retired.

Please visit its replacement: Clinical Essentials Guide

 

PubMed Tools

Did you know that in PubMed you can:

Use Limits to:

  • Specify the type(s) of articles retrieved (e.g., Clinical Trials, Case Studies, Reviews)
  • Specify age groups (e.g., 6-12 year olds, 19-44 year olds, 80 & over, and more)
  • Specify human or animal studies
  • Specify the language of the article
  • Limit resources to specific topics, like Bioethics

Jump to the PubMed Tutorial about Limits.

Use My NCBI to:

  • Apply filters like Systematic Reviews or Meta-analysis -- quickly find the highest level of evidence
  • Additional helpful filters are Practice Guidelines and Randomized Controlled Trials
  • See handouts below for step-by-step directions for setting up My NCBI

Use Special Queries or Topic-Specific Queries to:

Use Clinical Queries to:

  • Find systematic reviews
  • Use preformatted filters for evidence-based searching
  • Target articles on medical genetics

Jump to the PubMed Tutorial about using Clinical Queries

Sharpen your PubMed skills with these tutorials:

PubMed's Clinical Queries -- Prognosis

PubMed - Quick steps to using MeSH terms


So, How Do I Choose a Resource

Which resources answer which questions?  The process may look something like the following, (for a background diagnostic question):

Diagnosis question - resources decision tree

 

Adapted from a 2008 UCLA School of Medicine Handout, Stevens, C., Krasne, S., Ogawa, R.   For more information on other types of searches (in a simple handout format), please see the link in the box below.

PsycINFO Tools

Sharpen your PsycINFO skills with these tutorials:

 

Handouts