Carol Friesen, the MHIKNET Librarian for Manitoba Health, Healthy Living and Seniors, published an article in the first issue of Manitoba Libraries about a search filter she developed to narrow search results for literature searches in PubMed to high quality literature in the area of best practices. The search filter "provides consistency in searching for relevant literature and is included in focused search strategies that are used for ongoing alerts of current evidence-based literature". Here is the search filter:

improv*[TI] OR evaluat*[TI] OR effectiv*[TI] OR "best practice"[TI] OR "best practices" OR cost*[TI] OR economic*[TI] OR Meta-Analysis[ptyp] OR Review[ptyp] OR systematic [sb] OR Comparative Study[ptyp] OR "Comparative Effectiveness Research"[Majr] OR Evaluation Studies[ptyp] OR "Benchmarking"[MAJR] OR "Cost-Benefit Analysis"[Mesh] OR "Practice Guideline"[Publication Type] OR "Practice Guidelines as Topic"[Mesh] OR "Quality Improvement"[Mesh] OR "technical report"[Publication Type]

After this search filter is combined with other search terms for an applicable literature search question in PubMed, the results are quality filtered to find the most relevant articles for the question. This search filter can also be used in ongoing Current Awareness alerts to keep current on specific topics in PubMed.

Find out more about Quality Filtering here.

Contact us to request a Literature Search or a Current Awareness alert!

Friesen C. Development of a best practices search filter in PubMed. Manitoba Libraries. 2014;1(1):24-26.