NUR 7004 - Theoretical Foundations for Nursing Practice: Concept Analysis Paper

Using these search options in CINAHL do not guarantee that at least one of the authors will be a nurse (unless you are using one of the nurse author limiters), but the articles will at least be nursing-related. 

If you have questions about how to apply these options to your searches, ask the Nursing Librarian.

Disclaimer: These strategies are not recommended if you need to do a comprehensive search of the literature for patient care.

Available Limiters:

•  First Author is Nurse or Any Author is Nurse  

  • If you are on your results page, choose "Show More" under the year slider then scroll down to check one of these options.

  • This limiter was added in 2009, so it will only retrieve results added to the CINAHL database starting in 2009.  For the most part, this means that the results retrieved by this limiter will have a publication date of 2009 or later.

• Journal Subset = Nursing

  • If you are on your results page, choose "Show More" under the year slider, then under the Journal Subset menu, select Nursing NOT Core Nursing.  (Core Nursing might narrow your retrievals too much).

  • You can also apply this limiter by including it in one of your search blanks: type in SB Nursing .

Nursing as part of your original search strategy:

• Subheading "Nursing", if available 

  • This option only works with some CINAHL subject headings.  It does NOT apply to keyword searching.

  • The CINAHL subject heading you are using may or may not include the subheading "Nursing" (/NU) .  If it does, checking that option will help you find articles that the indexers considered to be nursing-related.

• nurs* as one of your search terms

  • If you add nurs* as one of the terms in your search blanks, the interface will find items that include the word nurse, nurses, or nursing in the title of the article or the journal, in the article abstract, or in the article subject headings.  

  • This is the broadest way to include the concept of nursing in your search so articles retrieved by this method may be less relevant to nursing than articles retrieved by one of the other methods.

Combining the results from these methods

Each of the above methods retrieves different results, so to give yourself a larger single set of results, combine the results from all of these search strategies using OR.

• Start with the general search tips at the top of this page.
• Use the "Peer-reviewed Article limiter".
• You can limit your results by research methodology type in PsycINFO, but it is probably not necessary to get that specific when searching for your concept.  You may not be required to use only research articles for this paper, but if you are, make sure that your articles have a methods section
• PsycINFO has its own subject headings (thesaurus), and there may be a subject heading for your concept.  If your concept is available as a subject heading, you may want to select the "Major Concept" option for that term. 
  • Video demonstration from the University of Toronto Scarborough Library  how to use the PsycINFO Thesaurus.
    • DE "Mental Health" finds articles where the term mental health has been assigned as an indexing term/subject of the article.
    • MM "Mental Health" is more specific.  It still finds articles where "mental health" is a indexing term/subject of the article, but it must be a heavily weighted, major concept in the article.  Subjects searched as MM retrieve fewer results than when they are searched with DE.
• As an EBSCO database, PsycINFO's interface has many similarities to that of CINAHL.  One is:
  • TI "mental health" retrieves articles where the phrase mental health is in the title of the article. Enclosing the words in quotes ensures that they will be searched as an exact phrase.

• Start with the general search tips at the top of this page.
• Web of Science Core Collection is comprised of multiple databases which cover the broad disciplines within the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, so you will likely get a very large number of results when searching for a concept. 
  • To narrow your results:
    • ​Search for your concept in the Title of the rather than the Topic.  (Change the drop-down menu to the right of your search blank from "Topic" to "Title".
  • Use the Refine options to the left of your results list.
  • Add more keywords to your search, connecting them with AND, for example: comfort and nursing
  • Use more specific search terms, for example: comfort and palliative nursing

Most databases allow you to refine your results by additional subjects, date, type of source, and more after you have run your search.  In the databases mentioned above, these limits and refining options tend to appear to the left of the results list.  

Please e-mail Ximena (ximena.chrisagis@wright.edu) if you are having trouble narrowing down your retrievals or if you have other questions about your search process. 

Browse all research guides (guides for other relevant subjects such as medicine, anatomy, education, and psychology)

Or use these related research guides: