I’m sure most (if not all) of you who are reading this note have used the online periodical search engine “PubMed”. This free internet resource is run by the National Library of Medicine as part of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. The web address is www.pubmed.gov and their site is fairly user friendly for most common tasks, such as finding an article to help with the paper you are writing. However, I want to point out a few USER TIPS for you to consider, which might help you take advantage of the great resource that this site can be:

1. Your hospital or affiliated university may have a web link or portal to PubMed which will grant you free on-line access to a number of journals which they subscribe to. This will save countless hours of pacing through the library to find journals and will give you 24 hour access to the articles anywhere you have internet access.
    

2. My NCBI: this link can be found in the upper right corner of the PubMed homepage and is definitely worth your time. The link will take you to a free registration page for the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Once you complete this page, you will find that you have additional access to many areas which can serve as great reference sources.
    

3. Automatic Emails: I know you probably already get too many emails, but this one is well worth it. If you complete a search on PubMed and are signed-in under your MyNCBI account, you will see that “Save Search” will show up at the top right of the screen. By clicking here, you will be able to register for an automatic email to be delivered to your inbox each time a new article is published on your particular topic. You can determine the frequency of these emails and can of course turn them off also. What a great way to keep up with your key clinical interests!

I hope you find these tips helpful. We certainly are in the age of ‘information overload’, but using tools such as this can help you keep up with things, while keeping your sanity…