Identify key concepts: highlight two or more important concepts in the topic.

dvt

compression stockings

long flights

Consider alternative terms. Medline has a thesaurus (containing subject headings). Using subject headings from the thesaurus will result in more relevant articles. But not all concepts may have a subject heading, so begin to also think about alternative terms.

dvt OR blood clots

long flights OR air travel

Shortcut for keyword search:
T o search alternative word endings in keyword searching (NOT subject heading search), use the truncation symbol : $ (equals zero, one or more characters)

eg. flight$ will find flight or flights

Identify word combinations:  consider how you might use the Boolean operators AND and OR to combine search terms.

Boolean operator	Demo
AND requires all search terms to be included in the record. AND is generally used to combine different concepts.
OR requires that one or more of the search terms are included in the record. OR is generally used to combine alternative terms for the one concept.