Impact of PubMed search filters on the retrieval of evidence by physicians.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Physicians face challenges when searching PubMed for research evidence, and they may miss relevant articles while retrieving too many nonrelevant articles. We investigated whether the use of search filters in PubMed improves searching by physicians.

Methods

We asked a random sample of Canadian nephrologists to answer unique clinical questions derived from 100 systematic reviews of renal therapy. Physicians provided the search terms that they would type into PubMed to locate articles to answer these questions. We entered the physician-provided search terms into PubMed and applied two types of search filters alone or in combination: a methods-based filter designed to identify high-quality studies about treatment (clinical queries "therapy") and a topic-based filter

SUBMITTER: Shariff SZ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3281182 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature