Dear David,
You don’t even have to do that
complicated a search to see the disparity between the two databases. Try
searching PubMed with “Family relations” as a MeSH Term and compare
that to when you search HIR for “Family relations” as a thesaurus
term. I got 58596 for the first and 5874 for the second – that is not a
typo! 10 times more results on PubMed than HIR. So unless I’m doing
something completely stupid (and someone please tell me if I am!) then I’d
recommend going with PubMed every time.
Regards,
From:
UK medical/ health care
Sent: 01 September 2010 14:06
To:
Subject: 'why should I use Medline
via NHS Athens instead of Pubmed?'
Dear List,
I've been teaching doctors and medical students how to use
Medline via the NHS Evidence Health Information Resources for around three
years (yes I'm still no' but a lad). I'm still very often asked what are
the benefits of logging in and using Medline to search for
literature instead of Pubmed?
Doctors seem very keen to use Pubmed. I guess many of
them have always searched this way and have grown familiar and comfortable with
using Pubmed. I'm quite the opposite, I'm familiar and comfortable using
Medline.
Whenever I'm teaching I like to be in a position where I can
answer the questions confidence (obviously), and give my learners the best
possible advice. So I decided I should step outside of my comfort zone
and practice using Pubmed, I though it better understand literature searching
from the same approach many of the doctors seem to be taking.
To practice I made an identical search using both Medline
and Pubmed, and I was surprised by different quantity of results between the
two.
The following search returned 256 references in Pubmed:
Measles"[Majr] AND "Disease Outbreaks/statistics
and numerical data"[Mesh]
compared with the same search in Medline which provided 142
references:
1. MEDLINE; *MEASLES/; 7986 results.
2. MEDLINE; DISEASE OUTBREAKS/sn [sn=Statistics & Numerical Data];
3989 results.
3. MEDLINE; 1 AND 2; 142 results.
I understand that Pubmed contains references to articles
which are 'ahead of print' and so this might increase Pubmed's tally of
references - but am curious to know why there are so many more.
For the moment I'm left in a quandary. I still feel
unable to confidently answer the question 'why should I use Medline via NHS
Athens instead of Pubmed?'
Any feedback and suggestions would be most welcome.
Kind regards,
David
Cleland
East Riding Medical
HU3 2JZ
Telephone: 01482 604323
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