Search Help

Help Contents

• Basic Search
• Advanced Search Options
• Examples
• "Improve Your Results" Messages

Basic Search

Search for

• Enter words in the Search for field.
• Enclose exact phrases in quotes.
• Searches are case-insensitive (capitalization doesn't matter).
• Use * as a wildcard at the end of words.
• Matching pages will contain all of your search terms or synonyms from our thesaurus.
• Pages are ordered on the list by "relevance," that is, to what degree they exactly match your search terms.
• See also Boolean Search, Examples and Advanced Search Options.

Boolean Search

• Use AND, NOT or OR to join search words or phrases.
• Use parentheses to group boolean expressions.
• Boolean words can't appear at the beginning or end of a search expression. For example, searching for AND cardiac will cause an error.
• See Examples.

Advanced Search Options

Article type

• Restrict search to one or more specific article types.
• To select more than one article type, control-click (Windows) or command-click (Mac).

Don't use synonyms

• The search engine looks for synonyms for your search terms in a custom thesaurus.
• Unquoted single words and quoted phrases are passed to the thesaurus for expansion.
• If you are getting unexpected results you can turn off this synonym expansion by checking the box next to Don't use synonyms.

Search examples

mi warfarin
will find documents containing both "mi" and "warfarin". Equivalent to mi AND warfarin.

mi OR warfarin
will find documents containing either "MI" or "warfarin". Matching pages may possibly contain both.

"myocardial infarction" OR "heart attack"
will find documents containing either the phrase "myocardial infarction", or the phrase "heart attack". Matching documents could contain both phrases.

("myocardial infarction" OR "heart attack") AND aspirin
will find documents containing either the phrase "myocardial infarction", or the phrase "heart attack". Matching documents must also contain the word "aspirin".

("myocardial infarction" OR "heart attack") NOT aspirin
will find documents containing either the phrase "myocardial infarction", or the phrase "heart attack". Matching documents will not contain the word "aspirin".

"Improve your results" Messages

The following words don't appear in ACP Journal Club

• Words in your query that don't appear in ACP Journal Club appear here.
• Check for misspellings.
• You may still get acceptable results because your words may have been expanded via the thesaurus.
• To get better results consider trying your query again with different words.

The following words appear very frequently in ACP Journal Club and were ignored

• Your query contained very common words that appear in most pages. These words were ignored.
• Examples include the, that and has.
• Common words can be omitted from your query.