Athletic Training

Primary Place to Search

For this assignment, you will be using Pubmed. Pubmed can be found through Google; however, use Pubmed going through the library as you will have more access than you would in Google.

Keyword Tips

Think of your topic in terms of a combination of:

• Sign/symptom (pain, edema) + injury (sprain) + technique/modality (cryotherapy)
  • In the search box, it would look like: edema AND sprain AND cryotherapy
  • Use 1-3 search terms in your search. 
    • To narrow: Use more search words
    • To broaden: Use fewer search words

Finding Positive/Negative of an Issue?

• Try keywords such as:

  • Benefits, advantages, or positive

  • Risks, disadvantages, or negative

  • Impact, effect, or influence

Have a topic that is a commercial product or program?

• Don't necessarily use the name of the product or program (e.g., Graston's technique)

• Think about what these products or programs do, and use those keywords instead

  • Does that program, equipment or technique work with a certain injury?

  • Are they using some kind of instrument (e.g., instrument-assisted technique) 

Have a topic that is a particular injury location or sport?

• When searching for sources, don't necessarily use search by sport. There may not be research on that specific sport as it relates to your injury. Meaning, a sprain is a sprain and how you treat that sprain is the same regardless of sport. So, when searching don't have your sport be a search term.  Save that for your write-ups.

• When searching for a particular injury like an ankle sprain, don't necessarily limit to body part. Just like above, a sprain is a sprain and how you treat that sprain is the same regardless of what type of sprain it is (e.g. ankle sprain vs wrist sprain).  So, when searching don't necessarily have your area of the body be a search term.  Save that for your write-ups.