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Nursing Research Orientation

Research guide for Nursing

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 Searching

 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.

Tools for Filtering Search Results in CINAHL

Explore Article Records and User Tools in CINAHL