PubMed - The way all scholarly research should be.
In case anyone was wondering (which you weren’t, but I’m telling you anyway, because you should know), the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed is amazing.
In their own words:
PubMed comprises more than 21 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.It is basically indexes scholarly medical journals, and includes abstracts of articles. It’s beautifully streamlined, and if the full text of an article is available for free (somewhere on the web) there should be a link taking you directly to where you can download it.
I’ve had to do a lot of medical research recently at work, and it’s one of these things that people don’t know about, so it very easily makes you (as a researcher) look very capable, when really it’s the capable thing (so to speak).
ALSO! More reliable than WebMD (and the like), largely because they’re not under the influenced of advertisers’ money, The National Library of Medicine’s Medline Plus is also phenomenal.
MedlinePlus is the National Institutes of Health’s Web site for patients and their families and friends. Produced by the National Library of Medicine, it brings you information about diseases, conditions, and wellness issues in language you can understand. MedlinePlus offers reliable, up-to-date health information, anytime, anywhere, for free.You can use MedlinePlus to learn about the latest treatments, look up information on a drug or supplement, find out the meanings of words, or view medical videos or illustrations. You can also get links to the latest medical research on your topic or find out about clinical trials on a disease or condition.
This has been a public service announcement.
Word! I use PubMed all the time at my job (reference at a health sciences library). It’s a great resource because unlike other medical databases, like CINAHL and Medline, it’s FREE.
