Research Hacked: Health & Medical Topics
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Do you find yourself struggling to sift through endless search results for health and medical information? Say "No!" to that frustration.
This guide explains the differences between "consumer health information" and information geared to healthcare providers and scholars and links to your best bets for finding authoritative information for both audiences.
Pick Your Search Tools
Consumer Health Information
- Aimed at the general public
- Provides basic health information, wellness tips, and advice on how to manage minor illnesses
- Written in easy to understand and accessible everyday language
- MedlinePlus **Find reliable health information from federal websites.
Clinical Information & Scholarly Research
- Targeted towards healthcare professionals and researchers
- Provides in-depth information on diseases, medical conditions, and treatments
- Uses medical jargon and technical language
- Presents statistical data and research findings
- PubMedFind citations for biomedical literature plus some full-text links.
- PubMed Central (Open Access Subset) This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
Search PubMed's open access content to find only full-text articles. - CINAHL Complete This link opens in a new windowFind clinical and scholarly information geared for nursing and allied health professionals.
Consumer or Clinical/Scholarly
- Merck ManualsFind comprehensive medical information for the general public (Consumer Version) or health care professionals (Professional Version).
Power Search Tools
- ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
Serves as the central resource for researchers at all levels. Covering more than 160 subjects areas, ProQuest Central is the largest aggregated database of periodical content. This award-winning online reference resource features a highly-respected, diversified mix of content including scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines, books, newspapers, reports and videos. *This is a Traveler resource. The Traveler Statewide Resource project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
- Gale Power Search This link opens in a new window
Cross-search the content of multiple Gale databases (including the content of Gale eBook titles) at one time through a streamlined, common user interface. Filter by source type easily using tabs to limit to Academic Journals, News, Images, Videos and more.
- Search Everything This link opens in a new window
Search all of the Library's physical collection and most of its eresources.
Select Your Search Strategies
Exact Phrase
Add Quotation Marks to search for an exact phrase or words in a specific or EXACT order. An exact phrase will return more accurate results because it snaps all of the words together, turning it into a phrase that must be found exactly in that order.
Example: chronic bronchitis vs. "chronic bronchitis"
3 Magic Words - AND, OR, NOT
Filters
Apply filters to limit your search results. Because they limit your results, filters might also be called limiters. The most common and helpful filters to limit your results are:
- Date: Limit to the past 5 years, or a specific date range
- Source Type: Limit to academic/scholarly sources or any other type, such as news or ebooks
- Peer Review: Limit to scholarly sources that have been peer reviewed
Keywords
Create a list of keywords associated with your topic.
What else could it be called (synonyms)? What describes it specifically (hyponyms)? What is it related to broadly (hypernyms)?
Example: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a group of lung diseases that includes chronic bronchitis and emphysema.
Topics can be narrowed or broadened depending on the use of search terms.
General: COPD
Narrower: emphysema
Broader: lung disease