PICO Search Using Medline Via OVID Pathfinder By Shanna Giguere Information Services III

PICO EXAMPLE Problem or Population: Client – With an aortic aneurysm  Intervention: The use of beta-blockers to reduce the rate of growth  Comparison: No comparison  Outcome: Decrease in rate of growth

This is a PICO search pathfinder using Medline via Ovid. Medline is for the use of health professionals. The Medline database provides detailed indexing and abstracts for over 4800 biomedical journals. Starting from the Durham College homepage, click on Subject Guides.

Scroll down until you see Health Sciences and click to expand.

Click on Health Sciences again.

And then select the articles and databases tab to bring up a selection of databases

to choose from. Scroll down until you see Medline via Ovid and click the link to open.

To access the Medline database you will need to enter your student ID number and your network password. Once you have filled out the fields, click on submit.

To begin my search, I am going to select the advanced search feature.

Is the effect By selecting the advanced search feature, I ensure that any terms I enter will automatically map the term to a subject heading. The PICO search I am using is for a person with an aortic aneurysm. The intervention is beta-blockers. I am not using a comparison for the search and my outcome the effect of beta-blockers on the growth rate of aortic aneurysms. Once you have filled out your search terms, go ahead and click search.

As you can see, the subject heading for aortic aneurysm is aortic aneurysm and is automatically selected. Mesh medical subject headings is a thesaurus of controlled vocabulary used by the National Library of Medicine for indexing Medline citations. Mesh will save you time and increase your number of search results. If you are not sure of the subject heading that is selected, click on the scope feature,

To give you a more detailed idea of what it’s about. Since this looks like what I am looking for, I am going to go back to the previous page;

I am going to explode my topic, and click continue.

As you can see, additional subheadings are brought up for me to choose from if I desire. For now, I am just going to click continue.

My results are and I am ready to enter my next set of search terms. For intervention, I am going to use beta-blockers. Once you have entered your terms, go ahead and search.

Again, if you are not sure of the subject heading, click on scope.

Since this looks like what I am looking for, I am going to go back.

I am going to select it as my subject heading for beta-blockers, I am going to explode the topic, and click continue.

Again, subheadings are brought up, but I am just going to continue.

I am now ready to combine both my searches. I am going to combine using and;

which will ensure that all my search results will contain

Both search terms. I now have 216 results and I can display those if I wish.

I can scroll down to look at my search results. 216 feels like a lot of results,

so if I want, I can limit those by adding additional limits.

I am going to limit my search by selecting female, the English language, and all adult 19 plus years. Click on limit search;

And now my search results have been reduced to 62. I can display those;

And I now have sufficient results to scroll through to find what I am looking for. You have now successfully completed a Pico search.

For additional information, please contact Trish at the reference desk at the Durham College Library.