How to use CINAHL - Mount Saint Mary Collegefaculty.msmc.edu/garofalo/searching_cinahl.pdf · TOPICSOPICS FOR FOR TODAYTODAY Database or search engine—which to choose? What is CINAHL?
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HOW TO USE HOW TO USE CINAHL Mount Saint Mary College
What is CINAHL? Why should you search CINAHL instead of reaching out to do a Google search? What about PubMed? How do I go about crating an effective search, so I don’t waste time and effort? Once I have the results, can I email them? Is CINAHL available off-campus as well as on campus? Let’s try a few searches— Any questions? Let’s continue….
WHAT IS A DATABASE?
¢Organized and searchable list of
published information
¢Contains citations, abstracts and ¢Contains citations, abstracts and
articles
¢CINAHL is a database
WHAT IS A SEARCH ENGINE?
¢A software program that searches for Web
sites
¢Searches based on the words that you ¢Searches based on the words that you
enter as search terms
¢Search engines look through their own
databases of information in order to find
what it is that you are looking for
IINTRODUCINGNTRODUCING CINAHLCINAHL
¢ What does CINAHL stand for?– Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health
¢ What can I find in CINAHL? ¢ What can I find in CINAHL? -authoritative (peer-reviewed) literature specific to nursing and allied health
¢ What does CINAHL cover?- indexes more than 1200 English language journals-covers 1982 to present- updated every other month
Two words you may hear when people talk about nursing and databases are CINAHL and EBSCO. CINAHL stands for the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health. EBSCO is the name of the vendor that creates the screens you see when you search CINAHL, the interface and how the database works and looks. CINAHL indexes more than 12 English-language journals, with coverage from 1982 right up until now. CINAHL is updated every other month, so it’s quite current. It’s also focused just on nursing materials. Why would being focused be important?
CINAHL CINAHL VSVS. G. GOOGLEOOGLE
� Coverage:
25,000,000,000+ pages
l Coverage: articles from 1982 - present
pages
� Focused on any information anyone wants to put up on the Web
� No controlled vocabulary
l Focused on nursing and allied health
literature
l Uses CINAHL Subject Headings
Google certainly has a whole lot more information than CINAHL, with 25 BILLION web pages, and CINAHL only having thousands of articles, but notice that CINAHL is focused on nursing and allied health literature, information that supports this course and your other nursing courses. While Google is focused on ANY information that ANYONE wants to put up—remember there is no one checking to see if the information someone puts up on a web page is correct, so what you find in a Google search may not be true information. When you’re searching a database like CINAHL all you’re searching are scientific articles related to nursing. This is a very crucial difference. When you’re searching Google, there is no controlled vocabulary, but with CINAHL there are subject headings, a controlled vocabulary of terms relevant to nursing that can help you search the articles more quickly. So although you might have the urge to search Google to get the information you need for a nursing paper or case study, do you understand why it would be more useful to go straight to CINAHL?
¢ Access to bibliographic information that includes
MEDLINE
¢ Articles from certain general science and
chemistry MEDLINE journals that have life
sciences articles indexed for MEDLINE. sciences articles indexed for MEDLINE.
¢ Additional life science journals that submit full
text to PubMedCentral and receive a qualitative
review by NLM.
I want to mention another resource that you may have heard of—PubMed. PubMed is a service of the National Library of Medicine. PubMed provides access to article citations and abstracts from materials in Medline, and articles from certain general science and chemistry journals with life science articles indexed for Medline. PubMed Central is the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature, providing free access to the full text of articles. Keep PubMed in mind, because….
PubMed is the chief resource used in hospital libraries.
WHERE TO START?
So, where do you start?
FFORMULATINGORMULATING AA SSEARCHEARCH SSTRATEGYTRATEGY
Develop
your question
Develop
your question
Identify needed
information
Identify needed
information
Search for
information
Search for
information
Search Strategy
The first thing you should do is take a moment and come up with a search strategy. Simply put, develop your question, then identify needed information before you go and do a search for the information.
DESCRIBE THIS…..
How would you describe this? I might say it’s a SELF-PROPELLED PERSONAL TRANSPORTATION CONVEYANCE. Any suggestions?.......... We’ve come up with a few terms. We’d have to use them all in different searches to retrieve information about all of them. But….. four wheeled, motorized vehicle used to transport people and goods on roads, or terms like Car, auto, automobile, station wagons, van, SUV, Chevy, truck......all are good, but the one overarching word Automobile would retrieve the most. So, when you think about….
PEDIATRIC NURSING CASE STUDY
¢Minimum 5 journal articles
¢Describe nursing interventions
to achieve your goals
¢Provide a rationale for at least
one intervention per nursing
diagnosis USING AN ARTICLE
from a nursing journal
Develop
your question
Develop
your question
Identify needed
information
Identify needed
information
1
2
Search for
information
Search for
information3
CCONNECTINGONNECTING TOTO CINAHLCINAHL::
OOFFCAMPUSFFCAMPUS
¢ Go to library homepage
http://library.msmc.edu/
¢ Use your college ID and name to login
enter all the zerosenter all the zeros
If you are offcampus, you can still get to CINAHL by going to the library’s homepage and then entering your name and college ID # with all the leading zeros.
USING AND TO COMBINE SEARCH TERMS.
¢Now lets combine both your search for
“Anesthesia, Local” and “Lidocaine” by
typing 1 and 2 into the search box.
LIMITS
CINALH also allows you to set the following
“quick limits.”
English¢ English
¢ Full Text
¢ Age
¢ Gender
NO HITS OR NOT ENOUGH HITS?
¢ Use more general search terms.
¢ Reduce the number of terms you are using.
Look for for alternate terms.¢ Look for for alternate terms.
TOO MANY HITS?
¢ Try to narrow your search by combining search
terms using “AND.”
Set limits by date, etc.¢ Set limits by date, etc.
Any questions?
REVIEW
¢ Databases are a better choice than Google for research
¢CINAHL is a database of nursing articles
¢PubMed is a database used in hospital ¢PubMed is a database used in hospital libraries
¢ When deciding where to search remember that CINAHL is more authoritative than Google for nursing research
¢ Think before you search
¢The Library can help you with using resources such as databases like CINAHL
OK, let’s review what we covered today So, can you answer …. why should you search CINAHL instead of reaching out to do a Google search? What is CINAHL? What about PubMed? How do you go about crating an effective search, so you don’t waste time and effort? And, if you have questions or problems, remember ….
