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Don't forget that while searching by MeSH Terms is great for doing focused, relevant searches it may prevent you from seeing any brand new articles that have been published on your topic. There is a lag between the time citations/abstracts appear in PubMed and when they are tagged with MeSH Terms. So if you only search the MeSH Terms field, you will miss those articles that have not yet been assigned MeSH Terms.
Solution: In addition to searching using MeSH Terms, be sure to also run keyword searches for your topic. You can "NOT out" the articles you would have found from a MeSH search so that you don't have to sort through a bunch of duplicates. Here's an example:
Search #1 - Search using MeSH Terms: Child Development Disorders, Pervasive[MeSH Terms] AND Anxiety Disorders[MeSH Terms] AND Cognitive Therapy[MeSH Terms]
Search #2 - Search using keywords: autism AND anxiety AND (cognitive therapy OR cognitive behavior therapy) NOT medline[sb]
The last piece of this keyword search statement will weed out all articles that have been tagged with MeSH Terms and which you would already have searched using the first search.
Remember, keyword searches search "All Fields" for all the terms in your search statement, so this second search statement is searching the citation information, abstract, etc. for the keywords you've entered. You may have to include different keywords connected with "OR" if there are synonyms for your concepts, as I've done here with cognitive therapy and cognitive behavior therapy.
Topics covered: biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books
Size: more than 24 million citations
Types of documents indexed: Mostly articles, but some online books
Date range: 1950s to present
Access: You can access PubMed from this guide or the Lister Hill Library homepage. On the homepage, click the PubMed icon in the middle of the page. (Note: Once you graduate, you can access PubMed at www.pubmed.gov )
To learn more about PubMed see our PubMed via LHL Guide and on the National Library of Medicine website.
An evidence pyramid is a visual representation of the strength of evidence. When possible, clinical decisions are based on studies at the top of the pyramid.
The level of evidence is based on the research design used to conduct the study. The most scientific, rigorous designs are randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews, and meta-analysis. These designs reduce opportunities for bias and confounders.
Use the "Article Types" filters on the left sidebar in PubMed to limit your search to Meta-Analysis, Systematic Reviews or Randomized Control Trials. "Practice Guidelines" is also available. If you choose more than one, the limiters will be searched with OR.
The following 9-minute tutorial demonstrates how to find appropriate Medical Subject Headings (MeSH Terms) for a PubMed search. Specifically, the tutorial walks you through:
In your own searches, you will likely find yourself using a combination of these three approaches.
Note: Click the to Full Screen button on the bottom right 
to expand the tutorial to full screen.
This 9-minute tutorial demonstrates how to perform a subject search in PubMed using MeSH Terms.
Note: Click the to Full Screen button on the bottom right to expand the tutorial to full screen.
PubMed includes some filters and specialized search tools that can be used in your search for evidence-based literature (see below for more information).
Filters
One way to narrow results to evidence-based works in PubMed is to filter search results to only specific types of articles such as randomized control trials, meta-analyses, reviews, practice guidelines, etc. To do this:
1) Go to PubMed
2) Enter your search terms and click the Search button
3) On the left side of your search results list under Article Types, click the filters you want. Some specific types you may want to consider are Meta-Analysis, Practice Guideline, Randomized Controlled Trial, and/or Review articles. If you don't see these options listed, click the "More..." link at the bottom of the filter category.
Clinical Queries
Another method for finding evidence-based sources in PubMed is to use the specialized search tools located on the Clinical Queries page. To use these tools:
Use PubMed's Clipboard feature to save results temporarily.
The Clipboard: