What is CINAHL?
Why should I research in CINAHL?
What & where are the Quick Lessons?
What & where are Evidence-Based Fact Sheets?
What & where are CINAHL headings?
Why should I set up a "personal account"?
CINAHL video tutorials & guides
What is PICO (and how does it help me research)?
I have a citation, how do I locate the article?
Sample CINAHL search with step-by-step directions
***A one-page handout of the 10 Steps to Searching CINAHL is also located at the bottom of this page***
Access the CINAHL Complete database
Sample Clinical Scenario
A 69 year old Caucasian male had a prostatectomy performed for a diagnosis of prostate cancer. He is married, has an active sex life, and is concerned about how this disease and surgical procedure will impact his life. He was very active in his Jewish Temple prior to admission to the hospital.
Some important factors to include: age, race, marital status, religion, preexisting conditions, current disease/condition/procedure, home life, medications, etc.
A 69 year old Caucasian male had a prostatectomy performed for a diagnosis of prostate cancer. He is married, has an active sex life, and wonders how this disease and surgical procedure will impact his life. He was very active in his Jewish Temple prior to admission to the hospital.
Refer to your underlined scenario terms
Note that he is not on your hospital floor because he has prostate cancer (the underlying disease). He is there because he has had a surgical procedure and you must treat him, first and foremost, for the procedure. All of his additional concerns result from the procedure (prostatectomy).
Library homepage--> Databases--> Health & Medicine--> CINAHL Complete
or
Library homepage --> Research--> Nursing (ADN, BNA, PN)--> Journal Articles --> CINAHL Complete
The patient in the clinical scenario needs to be treated for a prostatectomy.
In this case, prostatectomy IS a subject heading. Since the case scenario doesn’t provide a specific type of prostatectomy, CHECK the box in front of the “generic” prostatectomy subject heading to display the subheadings (used to refine searches to specific aspects of subjects) and the scope note (definition of topic and synonyms) which will then appear in the middle of the page (light blue shaded area).
Review scope notes. Check the appropriate subheading boxes (adverse effects, contraindications, education, ethical issues, mortality, methods, nursing, psychosocial factors, rehabilitation) then click the Search Database button at the top right of the screen.
Note that there are over 1, 000 results but don’t bother to review them. You must first apply limits.
Click the Show more link in the Refine your results section on the left-hand side of the page
When the Basic Search Limit window appears, select: (last five years, English Language, peer reviewed, set journal subset to NURSING) and click the search button.
Clicking the Advanced Search link located underneath the search box will give you access to the Advanced Search Limit window with even more limiters such as geographic region, clinical queries, and more!
Depending on the number of limited results retrieved, you may wish to implement further limits and/or refinements to your search before reviewing citations.
1.) You can limit to full text to only see what is available online in CINAHL
- When limiting to full text in CINAHL, remember that we may have full text electronic versions (or print versions) of articles available in our other health databases or our print collection. Use the Find This! button or the Journal Locator feature found on the main Databases page to search for journal article availability.
- CINAHL is the most comprehensive database for searching the nursing literature (and finding articles citations that may be available full text in other COD resources). Therefore, don’t automatically limit your results to full text—you could be missing out on GREAT articles available in another database or in the library!**
2.) Remember to look at the LANGUAGE of the article (indicated in parentheses in the citation list). CINAHL has articles in many different languages. That is why limiting to English language is recommended.
3.) You may want to look for CEU journal articles in your results list (see the example citation below). CEU stands for continuing education unit and these types of articles are GREAT for students because they provide not only an overview of a disease/condition, but also specific information to educate health practitioners on the latest diagnosis, treatment and care of patients.
4.) Further narrow your topic by supplying keywords or more limits. These, of course, will depend on your specific retrieval needs. For example, Click in the actual search box after the initial search string and add: AND (older OR elderly AND adult) to further refine search results to articles written about aged populations.
Once you have refined your results to a reasonable number, it is time to review the citations and retrieve desired articles.
Take time to review results:
- Place your cursor over the magnifying glass icon to see more information about the article including viewing part of the abstract.
- To save an article for later viewing/emailing/printing, click the Add to folder button (circled in yellow in the above image)
- click on the PDF full text link (if available) to view and print the entire article
