Summaries and Clinical Practice Guidelines - DynaMed Plus, Essential Evidence Plus, BMJ Best Practices
Pre-appraised resources - Cochrane Library, Systematic Reviews, ACP Journal Club, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects [DARE] (via the NHS)
Non-appraised primary studies - MEDLINE via PubMed (see below for tips), Embase
Search your question's most important PICO elements. Do not put every concept from your PICO into the search box. Once you have identified the main concepts of your question, you'll need to choose good search terms to represent those concepts.
Start broad, then more to more narrower concepts or keywords.
Search Tip: Identify alternative ways to state your main concepts and connect synonyms or related concepts with OR
Search Tip: Search each main concept separately, and then combine using Advanced Search
Search Tip: Avoid abbreviations
When you put one of your terms into the PubMed search box, if possible it will automatically broaden it to search MeSH (medical subject headings). For example: putting in type 2 diabetes maps to "diabetes mellitus, type 2"[MeSH Terms] and searches for both "diabetes mellitus, type 2"[MeSH Terms] OR type 2 diabetes
Don't forget to check the Search Details box!
PubMed offers search filters on the left of search results pages. You can select Article Type filters to specify certain study characteristics. These include:
Meta-Analysis
Multicenter Study
Randomized Controlled Trial
Systematic Reviews
Article Type filters cannot be used to find the most current evidence. Using these filters excludes articles that havn't yet been indexed.