The pond is wider than you think! Problems encountered when searching family practice literature

OBJECTIVE To explain differences in the results of literature searches in B ritish general practice and North American family practice or family medici ne. DESIGN Comparative literature search. SETTING The Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University o f Toronto in Ontario. METHOD Literature searches on MEDLINE demonstrated that certain search stra tegies ignored certain key words, depending on the search engine and the se arch terms chosen. Literature searches using the key words "general practic e," "family practice," and "family medicine" combined with the topics "depr ession" and then "otitis media" were conducted in MEDLINE using four differ ent Web-based search engines: Ovid, HealthGate, PubMed, and Internet Gratef ul Med. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The number of MEDLINE references retrieved for both t opics when searched with each of the three key words, "general practice," " family practice," and "family medicine" using each of the four search engin es. RESULTS For each topic, each search yielded very different articles. Some s earch engines did a better job of matching the term "general practice" to t he terms "family medicine" and "family practice," and thus improved retriev al. The problem of language use extends to the variable use of terminology and differences in spelling between British and American English. CONCLUSION We need to heighten awareness of literature search problems and the potential for duplication of research effort when some of the literatur e is ignored, and to suggest ways to overcome the deficiencies of the vario us search engines.