1. Welcome to the universe of medical
information!
Your guides:
Jennifer Rosenstein,
First Year Outreach Services Librarian
Eloise Flood,
Reference Librarian

2. It can be a scary place out here, but do not fear! You are
not alone.
Flight plan
1. Put your clinical question into PICO format
2. Search the MeSH database to find MeSH terms for your
PICO elements
3. Search PubMed for high quality evidence
4. Save PubMed searches to your My NCBI account
5. Search the Cochrane Library and JBI for systematic
reviews
6. Start reading and appraising the articles you found!

3. Ignition, Stage 1:
As a group, put your
clinical question into
PICO format
Ignition, Stage 2:
Understanding the difference
between Subject Headings and
Keywords
We’re primarily concerned
with two kinds of subject headings
MeSH (PubMed & Cochrane)
CINAHL

4. Subject Headings are controlled vocabulary
MeSH: National Library of Medicine
• Subject headings help organize the universe of
articles by making sure there is a consistent way
of referring to the same condition or issue
• When you search subject headings you are only
searching the subject headings section of the
article record
Keywords are not controlled
• When you do a keyword search you are
searching for that term or phrase anywhere in
the text of the article, not just in the subject
headings section

5. Subject headings vs. Keyword
Subject Headings

6. To access all databases:
www.pace.edu/library

7. Use the Select Database by Name
menu to choose the database you
want, then click Go to Database

8. To search the MeSH database, select it from the
PubMed homepage or the PubMed search menu

9. Understanding a MeSH record
Scope note
(definition)
Subheadings (can be
used to conduct a
focused search)

10. These functions can
help narrow your
search
Entry terms: If you type
any one of these into
PubMed or MeSH it will
map to this MeSH term
Pubmed auto-
explodes, which
means unless you tell
it not to it will
Narrower automatically include
subject the narrower subject
headings headings in the
search

11. Takeoff:
Starting to find MeSH Headings:
Search MeSH for your PICO elements
Be sure to add search terms to your grid, note if
it’s a MeSH heading, and whether or not you want to
explode it.

12. Take the helm:
As you find your MeSH terms add them to the search
builder
Use AND to combine different
elements, eg. P AND I
Use OR to combine synonyms or
related terms for same element

13. Use the Article Type filter in PubMed
To start select:
Meta-analysis
Randomized Controlled Trial
Systematic Review
You need to click on each Article
type to activate (apply) it

14. To save your articles create a group
MyNCBI account and send articles to
your collections

15. Getting help with PubMed
From the PubMed home page PubMed Help

16. 10 minute break

17. Heading back home:
Cochrane and JBI

18. Searching the Cochrane Library
Use Advanced Search

19. Use the Medical Terms (MeSH) tab to
search, then click Add to Search Manager for
each term

20. In the Search Manager, type the search
you want into the final box
Click Go to see the results of your search, then click
on the number of results to see them

21. JBI
• You can access JBI through the Pace databases
page
• You will need to use the login information
provided by the DNP program to log in the
first time and then create an individual
account

22. Searching JBI
3. Use the Search History to
combine searches
1. Use your MeSH
terms as keywords
2. You can limit to
Systematic Reviews

23. To save articles add them to My Projects

24. If you get stuck:
E-mail us
Jennifer:
jrosenstein@pace.edu
Eloise:
eflood@pace.edu
Nursing Research Guide:
http://libguides.pace.edu/
nursingresearch