Find Scholarly Articles for Nursing in CINAHL
This page offers handy tips for searching the database, CINAHL Complete, a powerful research database for nursing and allied health professionals, providing full-text access to top journals, evidence-based care sheets, quick lessons and more.
Basic Keyword Search
Keywords and Synonyms
Let's say you want to research whether obesity is an important risk factor for breast cancer. What are the key main concepts?
obesity, breast cancer
Now, think of synonyms for both of these key concepts:
| Obesity | Breast Cancer |
| excess body fat, eating habits, overweight, body mass index | cancer risk factors, carcinoma, breast tumor, breast neoplasms |
Synonyms may be broader or narrower terms, depending on your topic. These will serve as your search terms ('keywords") when you begin searching the CINAHL database. If one keyword doesn’t work, swap it out for another and notice how or if your results vary. As you get more comfortable with the database try using the CINAHL headings link to find alternate terms.
Advanced Keywords and Filtering Tools in CINAHL
Additional Databases for Nursing Research
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Dynamed This link opens in a new window
A clinical decision support tool that provides evidence-based information to healthcare professionals at the point of care. Includes information on diseases, drugs, and evidence-based treatment. To use the Dynamed mobile app, users will need to create a personal account. To create an account, first access this link to Dynamed, then follow these directions to create a personal account. Then install and authenticate the DynaMed app on your mobile device.
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Dynamic Health This link opens in a new window
An evidence-based tool designed to help nurses and allied health professionals master skills, obtain answers to questions, and support evidence-based practice and critical thinking.
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Nursing Full Text Plus (OVID) This link opens in a new windowA collection of full-text online nursing journals hosted by Ovid. This database is limited to 3 simultaneous users at one time.
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Proquest Health & Medical Collection This link opens in a new window
Provides journals related to clinical and biomedical topics, consumer health, healthcare administration, and more.
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Proquest Nursing & Allied Health Database This link opens in a new window
A collection of nursing journals from Proquest.
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PubMed Central This link opens in a new window
A digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal articles. It is a subset of PubMed which is limited to those articles where the full-text is directly available via PubMed.
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ScienceDirect This link opens in a new windowProvides full-text scholarly journals in science, nursing, and medicine. 1995-present.