CINAHL is an acronym for the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature.
It provides comprehensive coverage of the English language nursing literature.
CINAHL Plus with Full Text (the version of CINAHL to which the Library subscribes) indexes almost 5,000 journals and contains more than 4 million records.
Instructions for using this guide:
From the Nursing subject guide to your right, click on Databases.
You are now on the Nursing Databases page, which provides links to popular resources for nurses and nursing students.
Click on the link for CINAHL with Full text, which is located in the middle column.
You are now in the CINAHL database.
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When searching for evidence in the literature, it's best to take a structured approach.
Therefore, you should always:
1. Begin with a focused statement or question.
Before we look at an example of a focused question, let's look at an unfocused one.
The following statement is very broad, and will likely yield too many search results:
I am interested in nurse staffing levels.
When focusing your topic, it may be helpful to ask these questions:
For the topic of nurse staffing levels, an example of a focused question would be:
Is there a relationship between nurse staffing levels and pressure sores?
The next searching tip is to:
2. Identify key concepts of the question or statement.
For our question, Is there a relationship between nurse staffing levels and pressure sores, the key concepts that we'll want to search on are:
staffing levels and pressure sores.
Let's try searching for our key concepts.
In the first box, type staffing levels and pressure sores. Click Search.
How many search results did you get?
Does the number of search results seem appropriate to you?
This brings us to our next searching tip:
3. Use subject headings whenever possible.
Subject headings are standardized terms that describe a concept. They help you find articles about topics that can be expressed in many ways.
For Example: Cancer can be described in various ways, including malignancy, carcinoma, melanoma, breast cancer, etc.
With all these possible terms to choose from, how do you know which to search on?
In CINAHL, the subject heading for cancer is Neoplasms. By searching on Neoplasms, you'll find articles about this topic regardless of how an author may have referred to it.
We need to determine what the subject headings are for our two concepts, pressure sores and staffing levels.
Click on CINAHL Headings in the blue bar at the top of the page.
You are now in CINAHL Headings. This is where we will find the best subject headings for our concepts.
Type pressure sores in the box. Click Browse.
Instead of Pressure Sores, CINAHL tells us we should use what term?
It looks like Pressure Ulcer is the heading we want.
Click on the underlined CINAHL Heading, Pressure Ulcer.
You are now in the Tree View for this term.
The Tree View shows broader and narrower terms for Pressure Ulcer.
Heel Ulcer, which is indented under Pressure Ulcer, is a narrower term of this subject heading.
To select Pressure Ulcer, check the box to the left of it.
This should automatically check the box in the Explode column (to the right of Pressure Ulcer). If not, you can manually check it.
When you Explode a term, CINAHL will search on a heading as well as its narrower terms.
CINAHL should add Pressure Ulcer beneath the Search Database button on the upper right side of the screen.
Now we need to add our keyword to the search.
Click on Back to Term List, located in the green bar on the left.
Scroll towards the bottom of the page to the pink shaded area.
Check the box beside pressure sores to search for it as a keyword.
CINAHL should add pressure sores under Pressure Ulcer, both which are beneath the Search Database button.
You want CINAHL to search for either term (Pressure Sores, Pressure Ulcer). Which Boolean operator (or connector) should you use to combine these terms?
By combining Pressure Sores and Pressure Ulcer with OR, CINAHL will search for articles containing either term.
OR is typically used to combine similar terms and will broaden your search results.
Beneath Combine selections with, choose OR. Click Search Database.
You are now back on the main page in CINAHL.
Now we need to find a CINAHL Heading for our second term, staffing levels.
You are now in CINAHL Headings.
Type staffing levels in the search box, and click Browse.
Personnel Staffing and Scheduling looks like a good heading!
Click on the underlined heading to see the Tree View for this term.
Which of the following are narrower terms of the CINAHL Heading, Personnel Staffing and Scheduling?
Check the box to the left of Personnel Staffing and Scheduling.
This should automatically check the box in the Explode column. If not, you can manually check it.
CINAHL should add Personnel Staffing and Scheduling beneath the Search Database button.
Now we need to add staffing levels to our search.
Check the box beside staffing levels to search for it as a keyword.
CINAHL should add staffing levels under Personnel Staffing and Scheduling, both which are beneath the Search Database button.
We're now ready for our next searching tip:
4. Search each concept separately. Then combine search sets using AND, OR.
Since we have already searched each concept separately, we now just need to combine our sets.
We want articles that contain both of our concepts – Pressure Ulcer and Personnel Staffing and Scheduling. So, we'll want to use AND to combine our search sets.
If you don't see your search history, click on the Search History link located just below the search boxes near the top of the page.
To combine our sets, check the box beside S2 (Pressure Ulcer OR pressure sores) and S3 (Personnel Staffing and Scheduling OR staffing levels).
Then click on Search with AND.
Our final searching tip is to:
5. Use limits to focus search results.
Common limits are English language, publication dates, age ranges, and article type.
To apply limits, click on the Show More link, located in the blue bar to the left of our search results.
You are now on the Search Options page.
Check the box beside English Language.
Under Publication Type, choose Systematic Review from the menu.
Then click Search (located in the upper right corner).
Find the following article in your search results: Hospital nurse staffing models and patient and staff-related outcomes. What well-regarded group produced this paper?
Hospital nurse staffing models and patient and staff-related outcomes is a Cochrane Systematic Review.
Because Cochrane Systematic Reviews must adhere to rigorous guidelines, they are considered the gold standard to which all other systematic reviews are compared.
To see if Goshen has the full-text of this article, click on the link titled Search catalog and other full text locations.
Does Goshen have the full-text article?
You have successfully completed the Searching CINAHL tutorial!
If you have questions, or need help searching CINAHL, please contact Goshen College Good Library at (574) 535-7431.