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Medline

This guides elaborates how to do effective literature searching in Medline (OVID) for AUB students, staff, and faculty can use to search health and medical research..

Searching EBM

There are two easy ways that one can limit Medline(OVID) search to retrieve only EBM documents:

I.Clinical Queries

Search Medline(OVID) as explained above, then select the right "Clinical Queries" to choose the appropriate EBM filter after limiting.

"Clinical Queries" has the following options according to categories:

  • Therapy
  • Diagnosis
  • Prognosis
  • Reviews
  • Clinical Prediction Guides
  • Qualitative studies
  • Etiology
  • Costs
  • Economics

For each one you have three choices:

  • Sensitivity (produces largest number of records, from which some are not relevant)
  • Specificity (produces highest level of relevancy and the least number of citations with the possibility of missing one)
  • Optimized (results are in between sensitivity and specificity options

II. Publication Types

Search Medline(OVID) as explained above, then select the one or more of the right "Publication Types" that give EBM documents according to the clinical question:

CRITICAL APPRAISAL

Results retrieved from Medline after limiting with EBM filters have not been critically appraised, so you need to critically appraise before applying information to patient care. To do so, please check here.