Announcing a new course in QMedCourses

“Mam I need your help for a literature search as I am going to do a systematic review”.

In the recent years I have had several phone calls with this request. The person who calls, asks for help saying “I do not know enough about this – I have tried my best”. And then shares what he/she has already tried as a search strategy. As I browse through the attempt, my eyes hit upon the usage of any one or more of the following:

1. AND instead of OR
2. OR instead of AND
3. Incorrect Mesh terms
4. Unrecognized phrases in quotes
5. Insufficient number of synonyms
6. Unnecessary number of words (no truncation)
7. Long syntaxes
8. No structure for easy replicability of the search

I am no longer surprised at these errors. In fact, most of the time I expect them because the “required” basics of literature searching are mostly not taught in the curriculum. If they are, it is usually as a small part of a research methodology workshop. The coverage is just not enough for people to remember and do things right. Forget doing an in depth search for a systematic or scoping review.

With the increase in inquiries, we decided to add a course in www.qmedcourses.in

“Advanced PubMed Searching for Authoring Systematic Reviews”

This course is a mix of content – old and new. You will see some of the existing videos from the first and third courses here. If you have completed these courses, you could skip viewing them or you could revise them if wish to.

If you are new to www.qmedcourses.in – and specifically want to start with this course, you can learn the basic and the new stuff all together. The new videos are:

1. When your search term is not in the MeSH database
2. Tricky MeSH Terms
3. Finding all possible [tiab] terms for your MeSH term
4. Tiab “phrases” or individual words?
5. Proximity searching

We also offer additional help.

If you wish to do your search strategy by yourself,

1. You need to be fully enrolled for all courses in www.qmedcourses.in – either through your institution or as an individual
2. Do go through all the videos of this course and carefully plan your strategy
3. We at QMed offer to Peer Review your work – comment on errors or improvements needed (if applicable).
4. The first peer review will be free
5. If your work requires further inputs / training from us, we would request for an additional donation
6. If you wish to get help from us for a Scoping or Systematic Review, please fill this form

If you do not have the time to do this by yourself, we at QMed offer to do the strategies for you.

1. We will work on your search strategy, discuss it with you and finalize
2. If you are not already enrolled in www.qmedcourses.in – we will enrol one author
3. We will require a donation for our work (per hour)
4. If you wish to get help from us for a Scoping or Systematic Review, please fill this form

Note: Those who are already enrolled for all courses on www.qmedcourses.in  – will automatically get access to this course. Those who are not registered at all, or enrolled only for the free courses – will need to give a donation to get access to the whole site