Nursing

CINAHL Complete, like PubMed, has advanced searching features that can help narrow or broaden your searches and add specificity. Understanding these concepts will help you make complex, comprehensive searches. We will cover Fields tags and CINAHL Subject Headings.

Field Searching allows you to designate one specific field in the CINAHL record within which your term will be searched. These fields include (but are not limited to) Article Title (TI), Title and Abstract (XB), Author (AU), Author Affiliation (AF), Abstract (AB), Pagination (PG), and Source (SO).

• To search within a field, enter the two-letter field code, followed by your search term. For example:

• • Type AU Smith to search for Smith in the Author field of the record.

  • Type TI Student to search for the word student in the Title of the record.

CINAHL Subject Headings can be located underneath the search bars on the home search page. It is the last tab option. Once selected, you can search in the search bar for the subject heading you are interested in.

Selecting the hyperlinked entry for the subject heading will provide a definition of the term as well as its place in the Subject Heading hierarchy.

The checkbox next to the term selects it. There are also two additional checkboxes you can select, the first designates the subject heading as a major concept (i.e. it was tagged as central to the article) and the other "explodes" the selection. Exploding means that any terms underneath the selected subject heading in the hierarchy will also be searched. I typically select to explode and do not select as a major concept for the broadest possible results.

Once you have selected the checkboxes needed, scroll up and select "add to search". This will place the subject heading in the correct format in the main search bar. Subject Headings are written as: MH "Myocardial Infarction+" with the plus denoting that you have selected to explode the term.