PubMed provides several video tutorials to help you search their database.
In this video you will learn how to use the features within the Nursing and Allied Health database.
| BOOLEAN CONNECTOR |
ACTION | EXAMPLE |
|---|---|---|
| AND | Combines search terms so that each search result contains all of the terms. Narrows the search. |
"childhood obesity"AND exercise would find items that contain both terms. |
| OR | Combines search terms so that each search result contains at least one of the terms. OR gets you MORE!! |
"hypertension" OR "high blood pressure" would find items that contain either term. |
| NOT | Excludes terms so that the search result does not have the term. Narrows the search. |
dementia NOT Alzheimer's would find articles that mention dementia but eliminate articles that mention Alzheimer's in key fields. |
| PHRASE SEARCHING |
Use quotation marks around a group of words to search for them as a phrase. | "blood disorders" looks for these words in this order. |
| TRUNCATION | Truncation is a way to tell the computer to look for variations of words that start with the same letters. It's done by adding an * to the end of a word | nurs* searches for nurse, nurses, or nursing |