Nursing Research through the MCTC LibraryUse this hands-on session to learn effective searching for your Nursing research assignments.  We will take a look at online library databases like Cinahl, how to focus searches, and to expand them if needed.

Student Success Day Presentation 1:30 – 2:20 February 26, 2015

Why use library databases?

Collection of peer-reviewed journal articles

Usually the most effective way to find full text articles

Can limit to nursing literature, using nursing terminology

Can use headings in the database to focus your topic

Can link to other MCTC databases if you find a citation without full text

Connect to appropriate resources

Is there a research guide for your class?

If YES, it is tailored to guide you to good resources for your assignment:

Or, find nursing resources from the home page From the library home page: http://library.minneapolis.edu/

Click Articles

Click Peer-reviewed

Click Health and Medicine

You now have a list of databases

Health and Medicine list of databases

CINAHL is the recommended starting point for most nursing research at MCTC.

CINAHL focuses on the literature of nursing and allied health (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature)

Starting out in CINAHL

How do you know what words to use in your search?

Example: pathophysiology of Hepatitis C

What happens if I just start with those words?

18 citations on my results list.

Of the first 3, I have one with the full article in CINAHL. (I need to have the full article to read!)

The next 2 are “citation-only”, so I may or may not be able to find full text in another MCTC database. (How do I do that?)

The dates on my articles range from 1999 to 2014. (I need articles no earlier than 2007.)

I have 16 articles from academic journals (“peer-reviewed”) and 2 from magazines. (I thought CINAHL was a peer-reviewed database!)

Is “pathophysiology of hepatitis C” is the main topic? (Are there better words to use?)

Can I find the best search words?

The answer to this question may differ with each database.

In CINAHL, there is a very well-defined thesaurus of medical terms to use, based on the MESH headings used in PubMed.

(MeSH = Medical Subject Headings based on a system maintained by the U.S. National Library of Medicine.)

Start with a basic search.

Click on “Suggest Subject Terms”

Enter one of your search terms at a time (pathophysiology)

In CINAHL, the preferred term to use is “physiopathology”.

Checking on the subject headings for “hepatitis C”,we find that is the suggested subject heading, so we’ll go with that in our next search.

Testing our new search ~now our results are 659 (does this seem like too many?)

Limit to peer-reviewed

Under “Limit To”, click show more

(See the left column on the results page.)

Click the Peer Reviewed box

Run your search again

New results = 557All from peer-reviewed journals

All journals in this category have a policy of review of manuscripts by academics in the field, before publication.

But not everything in these journals is a peer-reviewed manuscript. Some have letters, news, etc. So you still have to look carefully.

Notice: Current Search box shows you all the limiters you have set.

Limit to only recent articles

Use the date slider to select only results from 2007 - 2015

New results = 316, all recent, all from peer-reviewed journals

Is it a good idea to limit to full text articles only?

Best answer is, “it depends”.

If you have a lot of results, and are seeing the kind of articles you need, it is an efficient way to focus on the articles that you can access right away.

If you are getting very few results (5? 10?), or not seeing the type of article you need, then it may be better to see if you can follow the “Find Full Text” link to another MCTC database that may have the article. This takes more time, and some databases do not play nicely with the linker software, and give confusing results. And, MCTC simply may not have any full text access.

Last resort – speak to a librarian to request an interlibrary loan of the article. No cost to students, but there will be a time lag in getting the article (1-3 days, typically.)

Limit to full text

Now, we end up with 63 recent articles from peer-reviewed journals, all with the full text of the article available right now.

This is pretty good! You can have more confidence that you have a more thorough search than the original one.

Not too many, not too few, and now it’s up to you to look through and pick the best one(s) for your topic!

Some other helpful limits

Limit to journals with a nursing focus only (not other allied health fields), look for “Journal subset” on the limits page, after you click Show more.

This would bring our last search to just 7 articles, may be just what you need to really focus your search.

Other possibilities:

Gender

Age group

Type of article

And more…

Look in detail at article recordTools on right side, including citation help.

“Major subjects” – confirms pathophysiology of Hepatitis C is a major focus of the article

The Abstract can help you decide before you print the whole article, if it is going to be helpful for your research.

You can also easily remove limiters

If you are using one of the research guides with a preset beginning search, when you add your specific topic, it may be too narrow.

Use the blue X’s in the Current Search field to quickly remove limiters and re-run your search

Usually best to remove the full text limiter first

If you need to find full text

Neither of these two articles is available full text in CINAHL

Click the Find Full Text link

For the 1st article, the result is this:

For the first article, the result is that there is not a full text match in any of the MCTC databases. If the article is critical to your research, you can request an interlibrary loan ~ but you willneed to speak to a librarian in person or through the Ask-A-Librarian e-mail link. There is nocost to students, faculty, or staff for interlibrary loans.

Try the second article

Success! The full article for this citation is available in another MCTC database.Click the title link to access the article.

Oops! Where is the article?

Here is a case where the linker software doesn’t work well with another company’s database.

We went to the correct journal in Science Direct, but we are in the current issue.

Checking back to our citation, we see we need to open Volume 28, Issue 6, and scroll down to the article.

Now we have success

For more help