MEDLINE® is the United States National Library of Medicine’s (NLM®) premier bibliographic database providing information from the fields of medicine, nursing and allied health amongst others. The database contains millions of citations and abstracts from more than 5,600 biomedical and life science journals, dating back to 1946. Everything in MEDLINE is assigned keywords that describe its context, using prescribed Medical Subject Headings (or MeSH).

At CCCU, we have access to MEDLINE on three platforms – EBSCO, OVID and Web of Science. This guide covers the EBSCO platform. Also available is PubMed, the free, public version of MEDLINE. Read our PubMed goes mobile blog post to find out more about MEDLINE and PubMed’s relationship.

MEDLINE has long been regarded as a key source for literature in the biomedical sciences and is used by researchers around the world.

It is of use to students of medicine and biosciences, plus other health-related subjects. Students from CCCU programmes including Biomedical Science, Human Biology, Medicine, Operating Department Practice, Paramedic Science, Physician Associate Studies, Radiography and Surgery are likely to find it very useful.

MEDLINE provides functions to make your search both efficient and effective. For example, you can limit your results by geographic location, publication date and age of patient.

• Go to LibrarySearch 
  
  
• Log in using your CCCU username and password. If you are away from campus, or connecting with your own device over Wi-Fi, you will need to include @canterbury.ac.uk after your CCCU username.
  
  
• Select Find Databases A-Z, then click on M, finally click on the link to MEDLINE (EBSCO) to open it in a new tab.

MEDLINE features basic and advanced search options.

The basic search allows you to do a simple search for information on a topic, such as the surgical safety checklist or tuberous sclerosis diagnosis.

The advanced search allows you to do a much more detailed search, which you would use for a complex topic or for a literature review.

The Advanced Search screen has three boxes (and the option to add more) and the most effective way to search them is to put one concept into each box. For example, singing and depression, each in a separate box, to research the impact of singing on depression.

If there are different words you could use for the same concept, these can be entered into the box with OR between them, for instance singing OR choir. Doing this means that MEDLINE will find articles and papers which use any of those words, which is a lot quicker than doing separate searches for each one.

Once you search, you can narrow the selection down using options in the left-hand column. This includes Publication Date, Language, Age, Gender and others.

See the video at the end of this page for a demonstration of how to use this database.

After you have accessed Medline, go to Help and search for accessibility or go directly to the EBSCO support information.

Try searching MEDLINE via EBSCO by following the steps outlined below. You’ll practice using some of the most common functions and be ready to search for information for your assignments.

1. Select the Advanced Search option (link is below the search box).
2. Search for the topic of the impact of interruptions on medication errors: enter interruptions in the top box and medication errors in the second box, then click Search. How many results do you find?
3. Using the left-hand panel, limit your search results to those published between 2016 and the current day. How many results do you find?
4. Using the left-hand panel again, limit your search results to Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals with Linked Full Text (these will be the ones CCCU has access to). How many results do you find?
5. Find an interesting article from your results list and practice accessing the full-text of the article.
6. Reflect on the type of information appearing in your search. How will you use this information in your assignments? How could you make your search more specific? And how could you broaden the search to find more information?

Your Learning and Research Librarian will be able to help you make the best use of online resources. For detailed guidance, book a tutorial via the Learning Skills Hub.