This page is designed to accompany the FAQ Page for Physician Assistant students.

ProQuest Health & Medical Complete

1. Access the database from the home page of Gutman Library. Use the A-Z dropbox on the home page. Select "Health & Medical Complete

2. Enter your search term in the search box on the "Basic" search screen. For a more detailed or complex search you can try the "Advanced" search screen.

3. After you click the search button the search will be processed and you will see the result of the search.

4. Note that the search results in far too many articles (the search does go back many years, so you could limit by date to narrow the range of articles).
You can also examine the suggested topics and click on them to narrow the search further. Also take note of the "Set Up Alert" button.
If you plan to be doing ongoing research on this topic, you can set up an email alert which notifies you whenever new articles are added to the database about your topic.

5. ProQuest databases such as H&MC allow you to format a citation in several different formats.
You can also e-mail the information to yourself, or export it to another citation manager such as RefWorks (available to all PhilaU students).

6. From any result screen just "mark" the articles desired, then click on the "My Research" tab. You will see the screen shown above.
To format citations click on "Create Your Bibliography" and follow the instructions.

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Medline Using FirstSearch

1. From the Gutman Library Home Page, use the A-Z database dropbox and choose First Search.
As the image below shows, from the main page of First Search, click on the tab for Databases.

2. From the list of databases select Medline (check its box) and click the SELECT button at the bottom of that page.

3. Enter your search term(s) into the search box(es). Note that Medline defaults to the advanced search screen.
This can be helpful to construct a better search. By "better" we mean fewer results retrieved and the results have a higher concentration of relevant articles.

4. Note that instead of just search "diabetes type 2" the searcher adds "oral medication" (e.g., the research want to learn more about new classes of oral drugs that are controversial) to the search. The default AND connector will find all the articles in Medline that discuss oral medication and diabetes type 2.

5. You will notice the search retrieves just 204 items from the Medline database. If you click on the "Libraries Worldwide" link you can find out what other Philadelphia area libraries subscribe to the journal where this article is found. That can be helpful to students who are willing to travel to a local library for any journal articles not available through the Gutman Library collection.

6. Another advantage of Medline in First Search is the ability to request an interlibrary loan (we will obtain the article for you from another library) while examining any individual article. You will see this tool bar at the top of the page. Just click on the ILL button to initiate the request for this article. Just add your personal information and the First Search system will do the rest. Do note that you must be a registered borrower at Gutman Library (you'll have a barcode on your ID card).

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Accessing Full-Text Articles From NEJM

1. Go to the Gutman Library Home Page. Click on "Find Books" to access our online catalog. Do a search on "New England Journal of Medicine" and select the record for NEJM. You will see a screen that looks like this:

2. Click on the "Web Link". You will be taken to a page that says "My EJS". The important thing is to click on the link for "Publisher's Site".
In a new window, you'll be at the NEJM site with links to various years from their journal article archives.

3. You will need to the account information to access any article. It can be found on the page shown above under "Access Notes" or at the very top (in a scrollable bar) of the actual NEJM page. At this point you can go to the year if you know the citation of the article or you can do a search of NEJM.

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1. Search the catalog using "journal title browse". If you were search for Physician Assistant, the offical journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants,
you can see how the search can easily be done in the online catalog (note that with journal title browse you don't even need to type in the whole title).

2. Just locate the title you seek from the search results and click on that title.

3. The next screen will provide more details on the title, such as what is currently held and what is bound (if we bind the older issues). Here is an example.
Note the "holdings" link, which you need to check for more details on bound volumes owned by the library.

4. Remember - current periodicals (not yet bound) are in alphabetical order on the main level while bound volumes are in alphabetical order on the lower level.

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Finding Electronic Journals at Gutman Library

1. From the home page of Gutman Library click on "Find Journals By Title". Let's say you checked the online catalog and discovered that Gutman didn't have a paper subscription to JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association). You would then connect to JournalList and you could search by letter of the alphabet,
or as shown below, you could search by title of the publication.

2. The result of the search shows that JAMA is available in full text in our ProQuest system.

3. Click on the link for the source database (take note of dates of availability).
That will connect you to the publications area of ProQuest - where you can locate your article by date:

4. It is also possible to use the advanced search in ProQuest to locate an article with an exact citation. Consult a librarian for assistance with this if needed.

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