PubMed Overview
The National Library of Medicine's major biomedical database providing access to MEDLINE and additional references in nursing & allied health, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system and general sciences.
Strengths
- Available externally, although connecting from the Mayo intranet is suggested to access the library's journal subscriptions
- Updated almost daily with new citations
- Citations date back to 1946
- Searches using Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
- Clinical Queries allow for easy filtering of topics in the areas of therapy, diagnosis, etiology, prognosis or medical genetics
Limitations
- May obtain an overwhelming number of results if not using advanced search techniques
- Proximity searching is not available via the advanced searching option
- Conference abstracts are not indexed
Helpful Resources
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PubMed® Online TrainingExplore the variety of videos on this webpage which shows you how to effectively search PubMed.
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Using PubMed in Evidence-Based PracticeWhen conducting research, evidence-based practice is a method for framing clinical questions that will help yield optimal search results. This course will show you how to use evidence-based practice when searching clinical questions using PubMed®.
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Learn about Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)MeSH stands for 'Medical Subject Headings'. The Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) thesaurus is a controlled and hierarchically-organized vocabulary produced by the National Library of Medicine. It is used for indexing, cataloging, and searching of biomedical and health-related information. MeSH includes the subject headings appearing in MEDLINE/PubMed, the NLM Catalog, and other NLM databases.