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PubMed search
Finding the Evidence
Getting Started with your research
Using PICO to frame your research topic : the PICO model can help you identify the key components in your research topic and for a searchable question
P - Patient or Population or Problem/Disease
Who or what is the question about? This may include the primary problem, disease, or circumstances.
I - Intervention, Exposure or Prognostic Factor
What main intervention/treatment are you considering? What factor may influence the prognosis of the patient? What was the patient exposed to?
C - Comparison(s) or Control (optional)
What alternative intervention are you considering, if any? For example, you might be comparing the efficacy of two medications or the accuracy of two diagnostic tests. Your clinical question does not have to always have a specific comparison.
O - Outcome(s)
What are you trying to accomplish or measure? What are you trying to do for the patient or problem?
- Finding the evidence
- Primary sources, such as PubMed, are the best place to start to find original studies (evidence) to answer your question
- Secondary sources, such as review articles or Micromedex, offer supporting or background information that can either answer your question or further support your clinical question
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PubMedSearches MEDLINE, which is the primary source of journal articles for the health sciences (fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, public health, health care systems, and basic sciences). Coverage is from the 1940s to the present.
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Ovid MEDLINESearches MEDLINE, which is the primary source of journal articles for the health sciences (fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, public health, health care systems, and basic sciences). Ovid MEDLINE is optimized for advanced literature searches. Coverage is from the 1940s to the present.
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ScopusSearch for information from scientific journals, books and conference proceedings. Covers the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities.
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Google Scholar (Setup connection to get to PDFs)Use Google Scholar to find articles from academic publishers, professional societies, research institutes, and scholarly repositories from colleges and universities. If you are using from off-campus access, change the "Library Settings" to University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Look for the "FindIt@U of M Twin Cities" links in your Google Scholar search results to access full text and PDFs.
Other Sources to Consider
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MICROMEDEXProvides access to drug information resources, including drug identification, packaging information, interaction and contraindication information, drug prices, international formulations, occupational safety sheets, safety in pregnancy, and more.
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PsycINFOFind articles in thousands of psychology journals, from 1806 to current. View this tutorial to learn how to go from a general idea to a very precise set of results of journal articles and scholarly materials.
Organizing Your Citations
As you search the journal literature online, you will need to collect/organize your references. The easiest way to do this is to use a citation management software, such as Mendeley or EndNote. Benefits to using these are:
- Stores citation information online
- Creates bibliography section of the review with a few mouse clicks
- Saves time
Mendeley is a freely available citation manager that helps you manage your PDF collections.
- Using Mendeley to organize your PDFs (tutorial)
- Importing documents into Mendeley (tutorial)
- Citing references (tutorial)
EndNote is a client-based citation manager that you can purchase with an academic discount from the University Bookstore.
Learn more about EndNote Desktop including how to connect EndNote to FindIt so you can import PDFs from the Libraries' collections.
Last Updated: Jan 15, 2021 3:58 PM
URL: https://libguides.umn.edu/OBIO/5001
