Nursing Research

• Use keywords (the words with the most significance).
  • Experiment with keywords by going broad and alternatively going specific (e.g., "fungal infections" vs. blastomycosis).
  • Try to anticipate the words and terms professionals would use.
• Put quotations around phrases.
  • A search for end of life might return results with the words separated, but "end of life" will return results with the words in that exact order.

• You can limit and tidy up your results with filters (often found at the top or on the left side of results).
  • Adjust the publication date to the last 5 years as nursing and health sciences are continually affected by developments.
  • Select the source types that will have the information you're looking for (mostly journals and books), excluding the types that will not.
• Notice that CINAHL Complete has filters especially useful such as:
  • Having the first author (or any author) be a nurse.
  • Specifying the age group of subject/participants.
  • Selecting special interests (or focus) like evidence-based practice, etc.

• Break up the intersecting ideas of your search so you can select where you search for keywords with the corresponding dropdowns, and you can utilize Boolean operators.  
• Boolean operators are terms you can use to broaden or narrow your search—the three basic operators are: AND, OR, and NOT.
  • AND links keywords and phrases (e.g., competencies AND nursing)
  • OR allows for related keywords and phrases (e.g., cancer OR oncology)
  • NOT excludes keywords and phrases (e.g., dementia NOT Alzheimer's)

Example: ("mental health" OR depression OR anxiety) AND TI (yoga OR "tai chi" OR qigon) AND SO nursing