When searching for individual research studies in healthcare, PubMed and CINAHL should be used. Google and Google Scholar are NOT sufficient for doing a good literature search in health care, although you can use Google Scholar to supplement your searches in subject specific databases.
Google Scholar alone is not sufficient for identifying evidence.
This video from EBSCO shows how to start searching CINAHL Subject Headings from scratch. It does not use a PICO question example, but you can use the same process to identify subject headings for any of the keyword elements of your PICO(T) question.
Note: To search PubMed®, please use Wright State's link for PubMed rather than the PubMed.gov® URL. This will ensure that you can access WSU and OhioLINK subscriptions to full text articles.
The scenarios used in this tutorial are geared toward nurses, but the tips for how to develop search strategies can transfer to any clinical scenario.
This National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) video demonstrates how to build a search from scratch using MeSH. Although it is not a search on a PICO(T) question, the same process can be used to determine if there are relevant Medical Subject Headings for your population, intervention, comparison, and/or outcome.
Demonstrates ways to limit to specific types of research methodologies in PsycINFO.
These persistent links allow Wright State University users to access these articles through WSU's subscription to AJN. Note: If off campus, you will be prompted for your campus w number and password before being taken to the article.
This collection of articles was authored by faculty from the Arizona State University College of Nursing and Health Innovation's Center for the Advancement of Evidence-Based Practice and published in the American Journal of Nursing (AJN)