To close out National Patient Safety Week and the Library’s special series of blog posts on the topic, here is a tip for searching PubMed using Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) to retrieve the best possible results.

There are three targeted MeSH terms that are useful in finding literature related to patient safety and error prevention: (1) Risk Management; (2) Patient Safety; (3) Medical Errors. Combining these terms into one search string looks like this – “Risk Management”[Mesh] OR “Patient Safety”[Mesh] OR “Medical Errors”[Mesh]. Searching PubMed using this search string yields thousands of results, so it’s beneficial to add another component to the search. For instance, there is a MeSH term for oncology units/hospitals: Oncology Service, Hospital. Adding this term to our search strategy look like this – (“Risk Management”[Mesh] OR “Patient Safety”[Mesh] OR “Medical Errors”[Mesh]) AND “Oncology Service, Hospital”[Mesh]. This yields a much more manageable list of references.

For more detailed steps on searching PubMed and other databases, please visit our Database Searching LibGuide or ASK US for a training session.