Skip to Main Content
It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older. This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results.

Physical Therapy

A guide to physical therapy information resources in Bishop Library.

Where Should I Begin?

MEDLINE Complete:  It is the largest medical database, and will provide you with scholarly journal articles. 

No luck?  Try CINAHL Complete or Health Source.

Image Source:  Gray's Anatomy.  20th edition.  1918.  Public Domain.  Wikimedia Commons.

Find

PubMED or MEDLINE?

MEDLINE is available via many gateways or interfaces:  PubMed is one, EBSCO is another. 

PubMed is the free public interface to MEDLINE.  Searching PubMed provides:

  • Out-of-scope citations from certain MEDLINE journals (i.e. Cell and Science);
  • Very current citations and older citations not yet indexed with MeSH terms;
  • Citations to NIH-funded author manuscripts;
  • NCBI full-text books;
  • Links to a small amount of full-text journal articles;
  • Clinical query search filters.

Searching MEDLINE Complete via EBSCO provides:

  • PDF or html links to full-text; linked full-text
  • Looking for full-text links;
  • Interlibrary loan links to request articles not owned by LVC.

Bottom line:  PubMed is doing more for your search behind the scenes.  It automatically explodes (includes narrower MeSH terms), and term maps (matches keywords to MeSH terms and pulls the MeSH terms into the keyword search).    It also provides access to a bit more information, 

EBSCO's MEDLINE Complete interface is a bit easier to search--but does not automatically explode or term map.