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A-Z Databases: MEDLINE

How to Access

You can access MEDLINE on the EBSCOhost Research Platform by clicking the link below. This will log you in automatically if you're already signed in to Office 365.  Otherwise, it will take you to a log-in screen - look for 'Access through your institution' option then use your usual UWS credentials to gain access.

When to Use

Literature Searching

  • To find good quality journal articles on a wide variety of topics in the fields of science, technology and medicine.

How to Search

Advanced Search

Typing a sentence into a search engine or database will not search resources effectively.

Consider the key words and/ or phrases that describe what you want to search (e.g. diabetes).

Enter these in the search boxes provided.

You can use various search techniques to add in extra terms, combine multiple topics, narrow results down and get more useful results.  These include:

  • Phrase search - including the terms in quotation marks to ensure they appear together (e.g. "home care").
  • Boolean search:
    • AND (+) - narrows down the results. All connected terms must be included in the results (e.g. diabetes AND foot care.
    • OR (|) - broadens out the results. Either connected term can be included in the results (e.g. "cerebrovascular accident" OR CVA OR stroke).
    • NOT (-) narrows down the results. The second term must be excluded from the results (e.g. dementia NOT senile).
  • Truncation symbol * can be helpful but should be used with caution.  For example, nurs* will find nurse, nurses and nursing ... but also nursery.

Use the available filters, e.g. to the left of your results list, to refine your search by date range, language or content type, among others.

MeSH search - using the Thesaurus

  1. Check the 'Suggest subject terms' box to search by the authoritative pre-determined  list of Medical Subject Headings
  2. Choose relevant heading(s) then 'Search database'. 
  3. Add other search terms or selections, if relevant.
  4. View as normal.

Top Tips

  • Once you've searched for something, you can use the filters on the right hand-side to limit the results, for example by year of publication, subject area or publication type.
  • By clicking on Times Cited (beside the search result) - you can see what articles are referring to this work.
  • You can click the 'Sign in' menu option, 'Sign Up' then login to create a personal folder on the EBSCOhost server- this allows you to save searches and articles, and create alerts for new publications on your topic.
  • MEDLINE is a core part of the wider PubMed and open access PubMed Central (PMC) resources from the US National Library of Medicine.

Full Text or not

MEDLINE searches are limited by default to only display selected UWS subscriptions.  De-select the 'Full text' checkbox to explore the full range of articles.

If you require an article which is not available on a full text basis, request a copy, free-of-charge, as an Interlibrary Loan (ILL).

Help & Support

If you need further help or support in using this resource, you can contact the library by email or log a call via the Self Service Portal.