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PubMed

Clinical Queries

What is PubMed Clinical Queries?

If you're searching for evidence to help answer a clinical question, PubMed has a search interface specifically to help with this. Clinical Queries enables pre-made filters to find research for different question types (Therapy, Clinical Prediction, Diagnosis, Etiology, and Prognosis). This allows for a quick but focused search strategy. They are useful when conducting evidence-based practice research.

 


Clinical Studies 

Once you have entered relevant terms from your research question

Select a Study Category from the drop-down menu.

  • Therapy (default choice)
    • Filter uses search terms related to clinical trials, controlled trials, random allocation, and theraputic use.
  • Etiology
    • Filter uses search terms related to cohort studies and risk.
  • Diagnosis
    • Filter uses search terms related to diagnosis, specificity, or sensitivity.
  • Prognosis 
    • Filter uses search terms related to prognosis, cohort studies, follow-up studies, incidence, and prediction.
  • Clinical Prediction Guides
    • ​​​​​​​Filter uses language related to validation, observer variation, predictive value, and scoring systems.

There are two scope filters:

  • Broad 
    • ​​​​​​​Sensitive search
    • Includes relevant citations but probably less relevant; will retrieve more results (default)
  • Narrow
    • ​​​​​​​Specific search
    • Is more precise, provides relevant citations but less retrieval

For more information, see available documentation on the:

Access PubMed Clinical Queries

To access the tool from the PubMed homepage, click on "Clinical Queries" under the Find menu at the bottom of page.

Search PubMed Clinical Queries

PubMed Clinical Queries contains two types of categories that you can filter by: Clinical Studies and COVID-19.

 

 


Scenario

Let's search for clinical studies on education and exercise for patients aged 65 and older who are diagnosed with high blood pressure. To search for clinical studies, type patient education exercise high blood pressure into the search bar.

 

 


The Clinical Queries page displays the first five results under the filter area. Click on "See all results in PubMed" to view all the search results and add additional filters.

 


Clinical Studies Categories

You can adjust your results using the two additional menus under the search box.

The Filter menu has five study categories: Therapy, Clinical Prediction Guides, Diagnosis, Etiology, and Prognosis. We will select the Therapy category because it provides information addressing the treatment of disease.

 

 


The Scope menu provides two options: Broad and Narrow. The Broad search will retrieve more results, but some will probably be less relevant. The Narrow, specific search will find more precise, relevant citations but retrieve fewer results. We will select the Narrow search.

 


For more information, see available documentation on the: