PubMed Tip: Clinical Queries

Posted by Emily Hamstra on December 3rd, 2020 Posted in: News from NLM
Tags: COVID-19, Pubmed, PubMed.gov

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The Clinical Queries search in PubMed provides a way to quickly locate clinical studies.

Clinical Queries was recently updated and now retrieves results for two searches: Clinical Studies and COVID-19 Articles.

Locating Clinical Queries

The Clinical Queries search is available from the PubMed homepage, under the “Find” icon.

How to use Clinical Queries

When doing a search in Clinical Queries, your terms will retrieve results for two separate searches: Clinical Studies and COVID-19 Articles.

Use the drop-down menus under the search box to select a relevant category for each search. This applies filters to your search terms. For the Clinical Studies search, chose from the categories therapy, clinical predication guides, diagnosis, etiology, and prognosis. For the COVID-19 Articles search, chose from the categories general, mechanism, transmission, diagnosis, treatment, prevention, case report, and forecasting. The PubMed Help Guide provides behind the scenes details on the filters applied for the Clinical Study Categories and COVID-19 Articles searches.

Clinical Queries retrieves 5 articles for each search, and you can view all results for each search by clicking “see all” at the bottom of the initial results list.

When to use Clinical Queries

• When working with someone who quickly needs evidence-based research on a clinical topic.
• When researching a clinical topic that doesn’t require a comprehensive search. (For comprehensive searches, use the Advanced Search Builder).
• When working with a new researcher who has a big topic that needs narrowing. Walking them through Clinical Queries can help them narrow their topic, introduce them to PubMed, and quickly find an article or two to get started on their research.

Learn more

NLM’s “Quick Tours” tutorial “Find the Latest Treatments for a Disease or Disorder” provides an introduction to Clinical Queries.

More details about the update to Clinical Queries are available in the NLM Technical Bulletin.