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Nursing: Tips for Searching CINAHL

Use this LibGuide as a tool for selecting quality information resources and following tips to use them effectively to enhance your knowledge and improve patient care.

What is CINAHL

Indexes over 2900 journals

Over 1 million records since 1981

Covers nursing,biomedicine,
alternative/complementary medicine,consumer
health and 17 allied health disciplines


Contains books, book chapters, dissertations, conference proceedings,
standards of practice, educational software, legal cases

For effective searching

Search with a combination of significant words, significant phrases and CINAHL Headings.

Consult the CINAHL thesaurus for searching terms and if they are explodable and if you can attach a subheading.

Consider LIMITing the results to further customize your results.

If you have too many citations:

  • AND in more words, concepts
  • Place words in the title       TI operating room
  • LIMIT to age, gender, type of article

If you have too few citations:

  • OR in more concepts       cholesterol or hdl or ldl 
  • Take away LIMITs
  • Consider searching in another database     PubMed     Google Scholar