Search for the hero*

Reblogged with permission from Patient Opinion UK.

Old hands with Patient Opinion will know that we give you a lot of ways to search for the stories that interest you.

You can search by author, date, tag, author role, service, location, speciallity, impact, lack of responses, helpfulness... well, quite a lot of ways, really.

But evidently not enough! Some of our users (especially researchers) have asked if we could make it easier to find, for example, stories about communication issues in outpatient settings. Something like (outpatient OR clinic) AND (communic* or inform*)

So just recently we added some extra "full text searching" to Patient Opinion. Here's how it works:

Ordinary phrase searching

If you enter the word diabetes into our search, we'll look for stories tagged with diabetes. If instead you want all stories which include the word diabetes, put double-quotes around diabetes, like so: "diabetes".

We call that a phrase search. The double-quotes are the essential signal for us to do a phrase search.

Advanced phrase searching

Now you know how to do a phrase search, here's how to push it further.

Stem search

You might want all stories which include words like diabetes, diabetic, diabetologist, diabetology. Or to put it another way, any word that starts with "diabet".

To do that, add a star to your phrase search, like this: "diabet*".

This AND that

What about stories which include the word diabetes AND the phrase "blood pressure"?

This phrase search will do it: "diabetes AND blood pressure".

But wait - what about stories including the word diabetes but NOT mentioning blood pressure?

Ah, you mean "diabetes AND NOT blood pressure." Simples!

One OR other

You might want a broader sort of search, like stories including the words sonographer OR scan OR ultrasound.

Enter a phrase search like this: "sonographer OR scan OR ultrasound".

Isn't that ORsome? (joke.)

One step beyond

Taking that last search, you might find a lot of stories of maternity care in the results. But perhaps you are more interested in scanning for gallstones.

To insist on gall-something (gall*), you could extend the last search like this:

"(sonographer OR scan OR ultrasound) AND gall*".

You need those parentheses in the phrase search to make sure things are done in the right order.

Or if the results from the last search weren't quite right, try this:

"(sonographer OR scan OR ultrasound) AND (gallstones or gall bladder)"

Having it all

So there you are: a lot of phrase searches for you. And the good news is that you can combine your fancy phrase search with all the other ways to search on Patient Opinion.

For example, stories from NSW containing the words diabetes or blood pressure.

As you build up your complicated searches, though, be aware that it can include only one phrase search element. If you add a different phrase search, the first one will be removed.