LibGuides: Healthcare Education (HCE) 111 Evidence Based Practice: Gather Evidence

Gathering Evidence

Database Search Strategies

These search strategies can help you in any database you use.

Using the right keywords can affect how relevant your results are.

Keywords fall into three main categories: Broad, Narrow, and Related.

Broad: More general categories (example: mental health)
Narrow: A specific category (example: depression or depression in women)
Related: Synonyms or similar terms, or terms that are connected to your topic (example: antidepressants)

Start with the main ideas in your PICO question. Add or revise using keywords you found when you did your pre-research.

Search with specific keywords (not questions or long phrases).
Use quotation marks around words you want to search as a complete phrase ("cognitive behavioral therapy").
Limiters: always use the Full Text and Peer Reviewed limiters. You can also adjust the date range to get the most current articles.
Number of results: Strive for no more than 200 hundred results. If you have more than that, try revising your search. You want a list of results that is manageable so you can look through them all.

Boolean Operators: AND, OR, NOT

AND: for combining unrelated search terms (example: depression and "cognitive behavioral therapy")
OR: for searching similar words (example: antidepressants or SSRIs)
NOT: for eliminating results (example: depression not "prenatal depression")

CINAHL Ultimate (database) and PICO Research

CINAHL Ultimate has a special PICO search option. Read the article Using PICO Search in EBSCO Discovery Service and EBSCOhost from connect.EBSCO.com to learn more.

Using PICOT Search in EBSCO Discovery Service and EBSCOhost
This article from EBSCO explains how to use their specialized PICO guided search feature.

Nursing and Allied Health Databases

CINAHL Ultimate (EBSCO)

CINAHL Ultimate contains full-text for more than 2,000 active journals in over 50 nursing and allied health specialties.
Nursing and Allied Health (Gale OneFile)

Nursing and Allied Health provides access to authoritative content including full-text titles cited in CINAHL supporting specialized care, treatment, and patient management. This essential resource is versatile and features highlighting and note-taking tools as well as an intuitive interface, providing multiple pathways to key information. Updated daily, this resource will help nursing professionals already working in the field, as well as students pursuing a nursing-focused curriculum. Exclusive features, including Topic Finder, InterLink, and a mobile-optimized interface, support and enhance the search experience.
PubMed

Comprises more than 19 million citations for biomedical articles from MEDLINE and life science journals back to 1948
Health and Medicine (Gale OneFile)

Health and Medicine contains up-to-date information on the complete range of health care topics. With embargo-free, full-text periodicals, reference books, pamphlets, and hundreds of videos demonstrating medical procedures and live surgeries, Gale OneFile: Health and Medicine ensures that researchers get current, scholarly, comprehensive answers to health-related questions.
Health and Wellness (Gale)

Gale Health and Wellness is a comprehensive consumer health database offering access to authoritative information on the full range of health-related issues, from current disease and disorder information to in-depth coverage of alternative medical practices. Features include topic portals with curated content on diseases and conditions; drugs; diagnostics and tests; and therapies, treatments, and surgeries; as well as a broad collection of premier full-text reference works, including Gale exclusives such as The Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, The Gale Encyclopedia of Surgery and Medical Tests, and The Gale Encyclopedia of Diets.
Human Anatomy: Gale Interactive

An innovative learning aid for the study of Human Anatomy that allows students to examine virtual 3D dissections and immerse themselves in interactive examination of systems and regions of the body.
Medline Ultimate

Medline Ultimate is a database that provides access to over 2,500 active full-text journals, including numerous top biomedical publications, to medical professionals and researchers.
Health Source Nursing/Academic (EBSCO)
Provides nearly 550 scholarly full-text, peer-reviewed journals focusing on many medical disciplines. Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition provides researchers, allied health professionals, nurses and medical educators with access to full-text scholarly journals focusing on many medical disciplines, as well as indexing and abstracts for hundreds more journals. Dates Covered: 1984-present.