Search Strategies for Nursing Students

Tammi Owens Krueger Library

Keywords

Establish your keywords BEFORE you start looking for articles

(You’ll thank yourself for this later!)

Population

1. Choose your population

Concern

Concern

Concern

Concern

Concern

Concern

2. List things that are important to, or are a concern of, the population.

Issue Issue

Issue

Issue

Issue Issue

Issue

Issue

Issue

Issue

3. List issues that affect/feed into/are part of #2

“I want to write about women with HIV.”

Women with HIV is my population. Write down yours.

Now think about the things of concern to them.

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Women with HIV

1. Choose your population

Dying/ mortality

Spiritual life

Sexuality

Quality of life

Managing symptoms

Childbearing

2. List things that are important to, or are a concern of, the population.

“I want to write about women with HIV.”

Women with HIV is my population. Write down yours. Now think about the things of concern to them.

Things that are important or concerning to women with HIV could be mortality, sexuality, childbearing, their spiritual life, managing their symptoms, or in general, their quality of life. Write down yours. Now list issues that affect/feed into/are part of the things above.

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2

Women with HIV

1. Choose your population

Dying/ mortality

Spiritual life

Sexuality

Quality of life

Managing symptoms

Childbearing

2. List things that are important to, or are a concern of, the population.

Passing disease

Raising

Finding partner

Pain mgmt

Family matters

Hospice Self care

Medi- cations

Medi- cation

Church

3. List issues that affect/feed into/are part of #2

“I want to write about women with HIV.”

Now go backwards through the mindmap/ flowchart and create your research question that contains your keywords.

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“How does self-care influence the quality of life

for women with HIV?”

Other options (from the flowchart): •  Is medication compliance the best method of managing

symptoms for women with HIV? •  What are the accepted practices for women with HIV to

have HIV-negative children? •  How effective are the pain management options for HIV-

positive women in hospice care?

Finding articles

In CINAHL and many other databases, remember: •  Use the Advanced Search. •  Place one idea on each line. •  Quotation marks ensures a phrase will be searched exactly,

like “self care” •  Asterisk leaves a word open-ended, so gender* will search

gender, genders, gendered, etc. •  If it returns too few results, go wider on your search.

Too many? Add a line with more specific keywords. •  Click on an article’s title to learn more about the article •  Need a nurse as one of the authors? Scroll down on the

advanced search screen and click the box “Author is Nurse”

Is it scholarly?

Do this in the database by clicking on the title. READ THE DESCRIPTION.

Check for hallmarks of scholarly, peer-reviewed articles.

Citing sources