BSc Medical Education

Paula Funnellp.a.funnell@qmul.ac.uk

Senior Academic Liaison Librarian (Medicine and Dentistry)

Searching for Information

Learning outcomes

• To be introduced to the library website and search tools

• To know where to look for good quality information on the web

• To learn how to use key medical databases effectively

• To be introduced to the main education databases

Library website

www.library.qmul.ac.uk

Search engines

• Search engine = supermarket

• Photo by vauvau (http://flic.kr/p/75yAAb)

• Searches across many DIFFERENT things

Healthcare specific search engines

• Search specifically across healthcare related resources

• Search across good quality internet resources

• Much more manageable number of results

Evidence Search

• Easy to use• Searches across high-quality

healthcare specific resources• Provided and managed by NICE• Wide range of filters allow you to

narrow down your search e.g. by type of information or date of publication

www.evidence.nhs.uk

TRIP

• One simple search box• Results are colour coded giving an at

a glance indication of quality of information

• Results vary widely - including primary research, reviews, textbooks and news

www.tripdatabase.com

Databases

• Databases – florist

• Photo by stevewhis (http://flic.kr/p/a4h4RJ)

• Collection of SAME thing

Databases

• Vast collections of references of published research

• Filters can be applied to narrow results down

• Searches can be combined and saved for future use

• References can be imported to EndNote

MEDLINE (PubMed)

• PubMed is a search interface for the MEDLINE database

• Database of references and abstracts of journal articles

• Covers the broad field of biomedicine• Special QM PubMed address for

easier full-text access

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?otool=igbqmullib

Education on PubMed• To do a comprehensive search on

education:

• Details – to verify what PubMed has searched for check the Search details box on the right hand side of the results page.

education OR educat*

Web of Science

• Part of ISI Web of Knowledge• Contains:

– Science Citation Index– Social Sciences Citation Index– Arts and Humanities Citation Index

• Need to log in off campus

www.webofknowledge.com

Scopus

• World’s largest abstract and citation database

• Search across a range of subject areas

• Includes Medline coverage• Need to log in off campus

www.scopus.com

Education on WoS / Scopus

• To do a comprehensive search on education :

• Web of Science and Scopus also allow citation searching. See other articles which cite a particular paper.

www.webofknowledge.com

Educat*

Hands on

• Work through the PubMed activity on QM Plus

• Work in pairs. – One try the Web of Science activity and

the other the Scopus activity. – Discuss your results.

Boolean operators

• An OR search – combine two synonyms to give a larger number of results

• Child health OR paediatrics will search for any articles containing one or both of the terms

Boolean operators

• An AND search – combine two elements of your search question to give a smaller number of results

• Asthma AND children will search for any articles containing both of the terms

Search techniques

• Truncation – add an asterisk to the stem of a word– Educat* will search education,

educating, educator, educational …

• Phrase searching – enclose phrase within quotation marks– “medical education” will return results

where medical and education appear side by side in the title or abstract

Searching techniques

• Proximity searching – using NEAR to ensure that terms are within close proximity in the text– E.g. medical NEAR education will find

results where the terms appear close together in the title and abstract

– Not available in PubMed– NEAR in the education databases

searches for terms appearing within four words

– Can use NEAR/X where X = number of words

Search techniques

“medical education”

Medical NEAR education

medical NEAR educat*

medical education

medical educat*

X

X

X

Search techniques activity

• In pairs have a look at the citations and abstracts in front of you, or on QM Plus

• Work out which results you would get with each of the following searches:– “medical education”– Medical NEAR education– Medical NEAR educat*– Medical education– Medical educat*

• Record you answers in the table provided

Subject headings &thesaurus terms activity

• In pairs attribute four tags to each photograph to identify / differentiate them

• Write the tags for each photo on a separate post-it note

• Swap with another pair and match lists of tags to photographs

Subject headings &thesaurus terms activity

Misty Rousehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/mistys_boopettie_cakes/5468814909/

Dog

CakeBirthdayParty

Subject headings &thesaurus terms activity

Stephanie Chapmanhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/imcountingufoz/5602273537/

Beach

Sand

Summer

Holiday

Subject headings &thesaurus terms

• E.g. MeSH terms in PubMed • Alternative to keyword searching • Fixed set of terms assigned to define

the main focus of an article• Each article “tagged” with several

headings• Heading not necessarily a word that

appears in title or abstract• PubMed automatically searches MeSH

terms. Check the search details box.

Education databases

• ERIC– the best database of journal and non-

journal education literature

• British Education Index– database of British and selected

European English-language periodicals in education

• Access through the library catalogue

ERIC/BEI on Proquest• Advanced search

• Thesaurus searching

• Explode

Hands on

• Search either ERIC or BEI using the example on the Education Databases guide on QM Plus

• Have a go at trying out a search of your own

Summary

• Use specialist search engines to search across a wide range of good quality web resources

• Use databases to find academic research articles, both primary research as well as review articles

• Use education specific databases when searching for information in this field