What is PubMed? PubMed is a database that covers the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the healthcare system, and pre-clinical sciences. It contains over 20 million citations and abstracts for articles published in thousands of U.S. and international biomedical journals. PubMed is a service of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and is updated on a weekly basis.
How do I get to it?
From the library's home page at http://www.usfca.edu/library/ :
Under Research & Collections, go to Start Your Research: All Databases.
Click on Nursing & Health Science.
Click on Journal and Newspaper Articles. Click on PubMedOr follow this link: http://www.usfca.edu/Library/databases/PubMed/Does PubMed have the full text of articles?
No. PubMed has citations and abstracts only.
How do I access the full text of an article?
Click on the title of the article to display the full record.
Click on the USF Find Full-Text Button.
How do I start searching?
Enter your keyword(s) and click "Search." To search for a phrase (such as "prostate cancer treatment") enclose your phrase in quotation marks.
When combining keywords with an operator (AND, OR, NOT), capitalize all letters of the operator.
How can I create a more focused, topic specific search?
Use Medical Subject Heading Terms (MeSH Terms).
MeSH terms are like labels that are applied to every article included in Medline. These labels tell you exactly what an article is about.
To do a MeSH search:
From the PubMed homepage look under "More Resources" for the "MeSH Database" link.
Click on this link. Enter your term into the MeSH search bar.
Click Search.
Select the box next to the MeSH term that most closely matches your concept of interest.
Click "Add to Search Builder"
Click "Search PubMed.
Watch a quick video on running a MeSH search: MeSH Search
For complex searches enter only one term at a time and click "Add to Search Builder" for each term.
Watch a quick video on combining MeSH terms: Using MeSH Subheadings and Combining Terms
How can I limit my search?
Enter your search term in the search box, click search.
Now click the limits button located on the top right of the page.
Use the limit button to:Limit to a particular date range.
Locate article published in a nursing journal.
Limit to English language articles only.
Select a specific type of study (systematic review, meta-analysis, randomized controlled trial, etc).
Specify age, gender or species. 
How can I organize, save or email my search results? Select the box next to the citations you are interested in.
Click the "Send To" button.
To hold results while you continue to search select "Clipboard"
To email results select "Email." You can also email the contents of your clipboard.
To save results as a text file, select "File."
Where do I go for more help?
View PubMed tutorials created by the National Library of Medicine: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/pubmed.html
Or contact a librarian for further assistance: http://www.usfca.edu/library/ask/
