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Search PubMed and CINAHL efficiently
with subject headings!
Searching PubMed
Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) work like hashtags for articles, and using them when you search is much more efficient than keywords.
There are many MeSH which refer specifically to Clinical Laboratory Science. Click the links below to try these MeSH terms in a PubMed search in order to find articles written from a Medical Lab Science perspective.
>>>See below for a video on how to use MeSH headings.
>>>> And be careful with formatting, you can't have typos or extra punctuation, or your MeSH won't work!
Clinical Lab Science Profession-related MeSH terms
- "Medical Laboratory Science"[MeSH]
- "Medical Laboratory Personnel/education*"[MeSH]
- "Medical Laboratory Personnel/standards"[MeSH]
- "Medical Laboratory Science/education*"[MeSH]
- "Medical Laboratory Science/organization & administration*"[MeSH]
Save yourself some time! Use subject headings or MeSH
One strategy that can make your research run more smoothly is the use of subject headings, like Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). Subject headings are what we call "controlled vocabulary." In other words, they are terminology that are used to identify all the articles on a given topic. For example, you could do one search for articles with the subject heading "Carbonated Beverages," instead of searching for all variations of the word "pop" (i.e. "soda," "coke," "soft drink").
Most databases make their own brand of subject headings; PubMed uses "MeSH" (Medical Subject Headings), but CINAHL uses "CINAHL headings". They still work the same.
Searching CINAHL
Just like PubMed, CINAHL has subject headings related to topics in Clinical Laboratory Science. Click the links below to try these subject headings in a CINAHL search.
>>>> remember that formatting is very important with subject headings. Any typo, and they won't work!