All About PubMed

PubMed, developed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), provides access to bibliographic citations to biomedical journal articles, including MEDLINE, and to additional life sciences journals. MEDLINE is NLM's database covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, the health care system, and the preclinical sciences.  MEDLINE contains bibliographic citations and author abstracts from over 5400 biomedical journals published in the United States and 70 other countries and dating back to the 1940's. Updated 5 times/week. View this PubMed tutorial to learn more about what PubMed is!

Access PubMed from the Health Sciences Library or other UH Libraries websites to see icons showing full-text availability.

Use the tabs at the top left to navigate through the pages of this guide.  Tabs are available for:

• Run a Search provides step-by-step instructions for running a search in PubMed, including inputting search terms, using filters to limit your search by language, ages, and other common topics, viewing your results, printing/saving/emailing your citations, and how to find the full-text of articles and order copies if needed.
   
• Find Full-Text lists steps to follow to get a complete journal article from a PubMed citation.
   
• Refine Searches provides:
  • Quick PubMed Tips Refine Searches
  • Hints for improving search results when finding too many or too few citations.
     
• Find Evidence-Based Articles details three methods to limit your search results.
   
• MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) is a list of keywords or descriptors that describe articles in MEDLINE.  Using MeSH is an advanced way to search to identify search terms and to focus a search.
   
• Export Citations to Citation Managers such as EndNote, EndNote Basic, and Zotero.
   
• FAQ

For comprehensive PubMed help, see PubMed Help (includes FAQs), visit the NLM Support Center (where you can Write to the help desk), or contact the library at hslinfo@hawaii.edu.

Handouts:

PubMed Handout

Search Tips

Thank you to the University of Washington Health Sciences Library for allowing us to use their guide as a template.