Emergency Medical & Health Services

Search Tips: PubMed

PubMed is a free index to millions of health-related articles. PubMed Central is a "subset" of the larger PubMed database and contains free full text. Because both databases are free, they don't have some of the features of commercial databases (such as ProQuest or Academic Search Complete); however, their coverage of EMS topics will make them very useful for you.

Using PubMed is nearly always a three step process:

• Use the search engine to identify articles of interest
• Hover over the journal name abbreviation to get the full name of the journal
• Use the A-Z periodicals list, linked below, to find out if TCC can provide free access to the journal

Using PubMed Central is usually just one step (find and open an article)--but there are far fewer articles.

Below is a quick video tutorial on basic subject searching developed by the librarians at PubMed. In the tutorial they mention MeSH "headings."  These are key to conducting an efficient, focused, search.

• The MeSH (Medical subject) heading for your field of study is Emergency Medical Services.

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• You may also want to click Limits (filters) and refine your search to only English language articles and humans (rather than animal studies).

Additional Search Tips

The [MH] command searches for articles with specific MeSH headings.  There are three other "commands" that can be very useful:    

1. [TA]= journal name (not sure how they came up with that one!)  Use the full name of the journal or its “official” abbreviation which can be found by clicking on “Journal Browser” at the left side of the screen. 
    

The abbreviations for some of your most important journal titles are as follows: 

• Journal of Emergency Medical Services =  JEMS
• EMS World = EMS World 
• Prehospital Emergency care = Prehosp emerg care

In this search, I am telling the search engine to look for articles about compartment syndrome only from the journal JEMS.

2. [TW]= Text words. Locates key words that are not necessarily MeSH terms from the text of the article abstracts

3. [TI]= Title words.  Locates key words that are not necessarily MeSH terms from the titles of the articles.   

Search Tips: ScienceDirect

To search for articles in ScienceDirect, we use keywords or short phrases. I always recommend starting simple, then getting more precise with your search. Look at the results to see if you can find any "narrowing terms" to try. Use a Boolean AND operator in the search to narrow as shown in the image below for the search of Intubation AND prehospital

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The image below shows a number of key filters off to the left side of the screen. ScienceDirect has many articles that you may not necessarily have open access to, but you can limit your results to only those that you can freely access now by clicking the "Subscribes Journals" filters. 

You can also be sure to narrow the results by date (when relevant) or to the type of articles that you're limiting to, such as Research-Based (scholarly journal) articles.

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Finally, by clicking on the title of an article you're interested in, you can then access it. Look at the screenshot below where the following elements are pointed out 

• The link to the full PDF article is at the top of the page 
• In the top, center, you will see the title of the Journal (Injury) where the article was published, as well as the date of publication and the volume & number
• To the left you see a preview or "Outline" of what's on the page (or in the PDF view), such as the article's Abstract - which gives you the overview of what the article is about. Some articles even have this "highlights" page where the most basic, relevant info, has been featured.
• Often you will see the DOI for the article, which is often needed when citing, and even the "Cite" button. 

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Please note: The "Cite" tool here is often limited in that it doesn't display and easy to copy, already generated citation (like many of the other library databases do). You can choose, however, to click on "Export to Text" option under "Cite" to see a list of all the bibligraphic info about the article that you would need to create a citation. - such as the following - for the article shown in the image above

Author/s: Melissa O'Neill, Sheldon Cheskes, Ian Drennan, Charles Keown-Stoneman, Steve Lin, Brodie Nolan,
Title of Article: Injury severity bias in missing prehospital vital signs: Prevalence and implications for trauma registries,
Title of Journal: Injury, Volume 56, Issue 1,
Year of publication: 2025,
DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.injury.2024.111747.

Search Tips: ProQuest

Use a keyword search - I would encourage you to start with a broad search term, like just anaphylaxis, and see what the search yields. 

In many cases, however, you will see to use a narrowing command, like the Boolean AND, such as the search for anaphylaxis AND paramedics. 

Using this capital AND between two or more keywords or search phrases tells the database (or search engine's like Google, etc.) that you are looking for results that include both of the terms you searched. 

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The Boolean OR is a widening command that has the potential of yielding more results. If you know a word has a synonym or alternate term, you can tell the database (or search engine) to look for either term. "Fence" in your OR command with parentheses like this" anaphylaxis AND (paramedic OR prehospital)

Also shown in the image below are the filters off to the left of the results that you can use to narrow your results. 

• Be sure to click on "Full-text" if you only want to see results fully available to you now. 
• Click on Peer-reviewed and Scholarly Journals - if those are both requirements of your search. 

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Using Boolean Operators

Watch this short video (3 mins!) about Boolean operators and how they are used in search engines like Google and in library databases.