Do you want to conduct your own searches, rather than using SearchMedicaDirect? The SearchMedica home page contains detailed instructions on how to use the physicians' search engine most quickly and efficiently.
On this page you'll find tips for better searching. Most of them feature actual searches people have tried on SearchMedica, with hints on how they could have been improved.
The words in parentheses are the search terms that inspired the tips.
ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS
ARTICLE CATEGORIES
BOOLEAN OPERATORS
CACHED
FINDING FULL TEXT
NAVIGATING
PUBMED ON SEARCH MEDICA
RANKING OF RESULTS
REFINING SEARCH TERMS
RESULTS NOT FOUND
SAMPLE SEARCHES
TABS
ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS
Abbreviations (A fib ablation)
Acronyms (retained products of conception)
ARTICLE CATEGORIES
Clinical Trials (cord blood transplantation for Hodgkin's)
Clinical Trials and Guidelines ("Clutter")
Complementary Medicine (CAM)
Evidence-based Articles I (predictive significance of egfr somatic mutations...)
Evidence-based Articles II (double blind placebo controlled)
Patient Education
Practice Guidelines (solitary thyroid nodule guidelines)
Research/Reviews (research articles on sexual offenders)
BOOLEAN OPERATORS
And/or
CACHED (Why did my search retrieve this article?)
Related links (octreotide octreotate)
Shades of meaning (Clozaril in patients with seizure disorder)
Tables of contents
FINDING FULL TEXT
Looking for /full/ in the URL (free review Hereditary Spherocytosis)
PDFs
Finding full text through PubMed abstracts
NAVIGATING
Basic navigation
Getting back to your results list
The black toolbar
PUBMED ON SEARCH MEDICA
Finding full text through PubMed abstracts
PubMed pre-filtered
RANKING OF RESULTS
Date ranking (hemorrhagic septicemia)
Freshness versus relevance (Chromogranin A and Prognosis in carcinoid tumors)
REFINING SEARCH TERMS
A tale of two characters (narcissistic personality disorder high functioning/exhibitionist)
Finding a specific article by title (Unusual injury? Recent injury in normal children and children with suspected non-accidental injury)
Finding clinical information on SearchMedica FAST (review of current treatments for social anxiety disorder)
Quotation marks (organized pneumonia)
Related terms (psychological theories of a rapist)
Words and phrases
RESULTS NOT FOUND
Articles not on the Internet at all (Radiotherapy in the management of plasma cell tumors)
Commercial websites and SearchMedica (buy Nolvadex)
Finding information when not much is known (supportive therapy)
No results? (social cogntive theory)
Suggested spellings (incretins)
What's not on SearchMedica (To the membership of the APA)
SAMPLE SEARCHES
A search for humor (humor laughter therapy)
A very targeted question (5-FU versus 5-FU and oxaliplatin as pre-operative therapy for rectal cancer)
Coding (code 99205 documentation)
Coding (ICD-9 code for non-traumatic fracture)
Drugs and SearchMedica (indapamide 1.25 mg)
Finding a specific article on SearchMedica (Excitatory actions of GABA in the cortex)
Finding clinical scales on SearchMedica (abnormal body movement dystonia related to medications forms to follow)
Finding urgent information STAT (crush syndrome)
Jargon (periodic febrile temperature)
Making your search more specific (therapeutic diet)
Making your search more specific #2 (fatigue management)
Peer review (peer reviewed, bipolar)
Query challenge (famous people ADHD)
Strategic searching tactics (strategic family therapy)
The problem with mental health (HIV and mental health)
Useless periods (cardiac troponin.renal,pediatric)
When to try a specialty (emergency service)
TABS
The importance of tabs
All of Medicine and the specialty journals (autism)
Practice Management
