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Doctorate of Nursing Practice - Library Resources: MEDLINE Tips

MEDLINE

All of the databases are accessible from the Articles & Databases page. https://guides.ucf.edu/az.php

All databases require remote access through the library’s EZProxy. http://library.ucf.edu/Databases/OffCampus.asp

General Information:

Medline is the major medical database from the National Library of Medicine covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and the preclinical sciences. Medline contains citations and abstracts from more than 4,800 biomedical journals published in the United States and 70 other countries. The database contains over 14 million citations dating back to the mid-1960’s. Coverage is worldwide, but most records are from English-language sources or have English abstracts.

Because the UCF Library buys access to several versions of Medline from different companies, you have a choice of different versions to search. You may search PubMed, the free version of Medline, or Medline from Ebscohost or CSA.

If you decide to search PubMed, be sure and login through the library’s EZProxy using your library number and select PubMed from the library’s list of databases. Even though PubMed is free to the public and accessible without your library number, if you login through the UCF Library, you will have links and access to all of the library’s full text journals.

Search Tips:

Medline-Ebscohost
The search screen for Medline via Ebscohost is similar to the search screen for Cinahl. Many search tips for Cinahl will also apply to Medline, such as the use of Boolean operators, phrase searching, and truncation. However, the limiters and fields are not exactly the same for the two databases. For example, MedLine does not have a ‘Research Article ’ checkbox, but CINAHL does. Medline also has slightly different subject headings than CINAHL. Additionally, the nursing journal limiter in Medline is found under ‘Journal & Citation Subset’ instead of ‘Journal subset’. For more information,  see the ‘Help’ screens found within the database for more information about how to search MedLine. Help is located in the top right corner of all Medline-Ebscohost screens.

PubMed
PubMed is the free version of Medline. The following are search tips for PubMed:

Use the Sign In link at the top of the screen to create an account to save citations and search strategies.

Enter your search terms into the search box at the top of the screen or click on Advanced Search for more search options. 

Never use a truncation or a word variation symbol. In other databases, an asterisk is usually used to search for the variations of words. In PubMed, the database will search for related terms as long as you DO NOT use the asterisk.

Use the Limits tab or the advanced Search link to search by author or journal.

Never check the full text box in the Limits area. Remember that clicking on full text may exclude citations where full text is available through the Get Full Text icon.

Use the Limits tab or Advanced Search link to narrow your search by date, language, gender, age, type of article, and subset of the database.

Once you have a results list, click on a title to see links to Related Articles.

To locate the full text of an article, click on the title to see the abstract view of the article. Links to full text may appear here. If not, use the “Get Full Text” icon.

Check off citations of interest, then use the Send To pull-down menu, to send the citations to a Text file, Printer, Clipboard or Email. The Clipboard is like a folder that will hold your citations until you are ready to work with them.

For More Help:

Consult the Help/FAQ and Tutorials provided by PubMed on the left side of the screen. You may also seek help from the Ask a Librarian service. For hours of operation and phone numbers: http://library.ucf.edu/Ask. A toll free phone number is available.