Honours Bachelor of Science - Nursing Degree

This tutorial provides an overview of how to use key features in CINAHL and how to print a search history.

Please go to the library’s homepage and select CINAHL Plus with Full Text.

Let’s demonstrate with the example of social media and ethics in nursing.

At the top of the page, we enter key words in the search box one at a time to find matching or relevant subject headings.

First I enter the keyword “ethics” and I select “search.” I can determine from the subject headings located on the left that “Ethics, Nursing” is the most relevant subject heading because I need it to be about nursing practice. It’s important to highlight the scope note located on the right to make sure my definitions are correct. I select “Ethics, Nursing.” Usually I highlight “Explode” to increase the number of articles, but if you can’t do it then you just select “Search” database.

I clear “Ethics, Nursing” from the search box and enter the key concept, “social media” and highlight “Search.” From the list of subject headings located on the left I can determine that “Social Media” is a relevant subject heading to use. I always make sure that I highlight the scope note to make sure my definition is correct. Now I select “Social Media.” Normally I like to “Explode” or increase the search results, but the database doesn’t always allow it. So in this case I highlight “Search” Database.

I highlight “Search History” located under the search boxes so that I may combine and limit search results. I highlight “Ethics, Nursing” and “Social Media” and then I select “Search with AND” because I want my results to be combined and relevant.

I would like to limit the number of search results and I do that by locating the “Edit” icon towards the right. I can limit my results by the English language, by peer-reviewed, and by publication year of 2010 to 2018.

Please don’t click on “Full Text” in CINAHL as this limits the number of full text available to you. I enable those results by highlighting the “Save” icon. I highlight “View Results” to see what journal articles were retrieved. Number ten in my result list is PDF Full Text which means the whole article is full text and I access it by clicking on “PDF Full Text.” Number eleven isn’t full text in CINAHL, but please highlight “Check for Item” to determine if the article is available elsewhere.

Lastly, we can print out our search history by going to the top of the page and highlighting the link “Print Search History.” This outlines all the steps you took.

This concludes the tutorial on how to search the CINAHL database.