McGovern Library: NUR 310: Fundamental Nursing Concepts I: Researching in the Library

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Databases to Start With

CINAHL Complete This link opens in a new window
CINAHL Complete is a comprehensive database of full-text journals and articles for nursing and allied health. This database includes academic and peer-reviewed journals, magazine and newspaper articles, books, and more.
Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition This link opens in a new window
Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition features the AHFS Consumer Medication Information, which covers generic and brand name drug patient education sheets, and access to scholarly journals focusing on the medical disciplines. This database includes drug sheets, academic and peer-reviewed journals, magazine and newspaper articles, reviews, and more.

Explore all of the Databases Recommended for Nursing

Searching CINAHL Complete & Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition

Once you select the database CINAHL Complete or Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition from the Database List, you will be redirected to the page shown below. This page is the Advanced Search page, and will allow you to add in various limiters to your search from the beginning. The search layout in both CINAHL Complete and Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition is the same as Academic Search Premier, EBSCO Mega File, and more.

Next, type in your keywords and search terms. Also, add in any limiters you would like to apply from the beginning. Below is an example search for college students and social media usage. We will add in limiters in the next step after we search only these terms.

This search provided 45 search results, which is a fairly manageable number. We could stop our search here, or we could add in additional limiters. Additional limiters will allow us to focus our search results more, and will ensure that we are finding results desired. If the additional limiters bring the search results to zero, we will know that our original search terms were too narrow, and we will have to broaden our search terms.

We will add the following limiters (which are show in a screenshot below):

Publication Date Range: 2015-2020
Full-Text
Scholarly (Peer-Reviewed) Journals

Once your limiters are in place, you can begin looking through the results. Find an article you like, and click the title. This will bring you to the article's record and will provide additional information. Below are some of the additional pieces of information provided.

PDF Full Text: A PDF copy of the article. If this is not here, you will need to request the article through Inter-Library Loan to access and read.
Title: The title is always located at the top of the record, followed by the author and publisher information.
Subject Terms: These terms are created and provided by the authors, but are great terms to use for subsequent searches. These terms are also linked (which allows you to click on the term and be re-directed to a search result page for that term).
Abstract: The abstract is a summary of the article, and is written by the author. Always read the abstract to determine if the article contains information relevant to your research.
Cite: Citations are provided by the database, but should always be checked before used in case of errors.