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Nursing: CINAHL Search Tips

 

Need research help and not sure where to turn? Get help from the library via email, chat, and online appointments or stop by one of our reference desks during open hours of operation. 

Want to contact your Nursing & Health Sciences Librarian or set up a virtual or F2F appointment with her? Email Debra Smith: smithkak@cod.edu

Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature (CINAHL)

Need help with PICO?

Go to the Assignment & Resource Tips page of this guide and look at the NURSI 2320 section for PICO templates and tutorials!

CINAHL Advanced Searching Tutorial (3:45)

CINAHL Subject Headings

  • CINAHL headings are controlled vocabulary (subject headings) representing concepts allowing more thorough searches than if you just used keywords
  • For example, searching the CINAHL heading “myocardial infarction” finds articles containing all synonyms including Heart Attack; Infarction, Myocardial; Myocardiac Infarction; Myocardial Infarctions; Heart Attacks; Infarctions Myocardial; Myocardiac Infarctions; MI

To browse or search for specific CINAHL headings, click the CINAHL headings button located at the top of all CINAHL database pages

For additional information on using CINAHL headings, check out the
Using CINAHL/MeSH Headings - Help Sheet

This tutorial demonstrates how to create a targeted search using the CINAHL/MeSH Headings (3:33)

Requesting Articles

If you find a citation for an article that you'd like, but no full-text is available (or you're being asked to pay for the article)...

Follow the steps below: 

  1. Start by searching the journal name (NOT the article title) Journal Locator.
  2. If the result indicates that the journal is available in a COD database, click on the database link and search by article title. 
  3. If there are no relevant results, go to InterLibrary Loan forms.   
  4. Fill out the Article form.  In about 3-5 business days, an electronic copy of the article will be delivered to your email.

My EBSCO Folder Tutorial (3:43)

This tutorial demonstrates how to create a FREE personal My EBSCOhost folder account as well as the features of the Personalization folder.

Benefits of creating a personal folder account include:

  • Saving searches
    • rerun them at a later date (retrieving newly published articles)--this works great if you are interested specific topics and wish to see all new articles published on your topic
    • don't have to reinvent complicated search strategies if your session times out or you need to close out of CINAHL
  • Organize various assignments or interest areas into folders for saved searches and articles
    • create saved searches for all of your research assignments/topics
    • create topic folders to organize saved articles

Click on the HELP link located at the top, right-hand side of CINAHL to access step-by-step instructions on creating/sharing folders, saving searches, articles and more.

  • URL: https://library.cod.edu/nursing
  • Last Updated: Mar 15, 2024 11:13 AM
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