Clinical Queries Are Effective

The use of the clinical queries filters is strongly recommended by proponents of evidence-based medicine and is often taught in courses for physicians about literature searching. Our results support the use of this PubMed filter.

The authors also point out that the filters were infrequently used by the sample.  Unless you know they're there, they're difficult to stumble upon.  Perhaps they can be integrated into the main search in some way.  

 The abstract in PubMed.

UpToDate vs PubMed Clinical Queries

This comparison strikes me as unfair.  It's like comparing a textbook to an article.  Apples to oranges. From the discussion:

PubMed Cilnical Queries is a set of search filters for separating valid and relevant articles out of the repository of PubMed citations. Thus limits its clinical efficiency; because: a) Searching for one question may yield multiple high quality articles that present different answers, which the clinician does not have time to evaluate comprehensively. b) Few articles compare all management options for a given health problem. Therefore if the clinicians intend to decide between all possible options, they would have to review several studies systematically to inform their decision making. This is time consuming and also requires expertise.

On the other hand, UpToDate is highly efficient; because a) the information is organized in entries rather than articles; each discusses a complaint (e.g. chest pain), disease (e.g. acute coronary syndrome) or a category (e.g. diagnosis) of a disease; if a special issue needs further discussion, another entry would be specified to it (e.g. cholesterol lowering after an acute coronary syndrome). Thus, the clinician is guided to alternation and is not overwhelmed with information. b) The information is provided by integrating the best available evidence by experts to address all management options for a given health problem and most of the recommendations are graded on the basis of their level of evidence. Thus, clinicians can use the recommendations knowing that all options are considered and the best one is recommended.

Yes, searching PubMed and other citation resources takes time and critically appraising individual studies, even systematic reviews, is impractical.  And, yes, point of care resources that provide topic syntheses are very valuable clinical tools, precisely because they synthesize the literature.  Maybe this comparison would work if PubMed had a team of editors that compiled and summarized studies, and then provided clinical recommendations based on that initial legwork.  But, it doesn't.  It's a database of citations, with a set of (effective) filters that assist searchers in finding evidence.  Very different.   

Is New PubMed a Missed Opportunity?

An interesting question posed in a poetic fashion at Laika's MedLibLog. 

my point is that the new PubMed creation

could have been so much better:

not only the functionality, the route also matters.

The redesign is a missed opportunity,

to build an entire new PubMed you see.

The interface is still quite orthodox.

I want clickable and movable boxes

with MESH in clouds thru which you can “walk”

and Clinical Queries that you can drag and drop

with a mapping tool-you can adjust

Yeah, it would've been interesting if 'they' went completely ultra-modern, but PubMed is a government website and ultra-modern web-design and government websites are two things that don't typically go together very well (for better or worse).  Plus, advanced, complex searches probably constitute a small portion of all PubMed queries, and I wouldn't be surprised if the design goal was to make the search experience as streamlined and basic as possible.  For that reason, appeasing advanced searchers was probably low on the new PubMed priority list. 

[Aside] I must say, though, that I'd like to see the clinical queries somehow integrated into the main search box, 'cause it'd be nice to be able to select a query without having to go to a separate search page to do so...[/Aside]

[Aside within Aside] Or memorize tags like this:

(Therapy/Narrow[filter])

and this:

systematic[sb]

[/Aside within Aside]

[Aside] Granted, the search filters through MyNCBI can help with this, but it's bummer that you're limited to five filters.  Personally, I'd have 10 or so enabled if PubMed allowed it.[/Aside]