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Faculty Overview of Evidence Informed Practice (EIP): b. CINAHL Complete

Tips & Techniques for Keeping up with Research

Basic CINAHL Searching

CIHAHL Search Example

Schenario: Your adult patient was recently diagnosed with cancer and has asked you if there are any mind-body therapies (e.g. meditation, progressive relaxation, deep breathing) that might be effective in reducing their anxiety level.

Notes:

CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature) is a nursing database with lots of full text; it indexes fewer journals than PubMed, but nursing has always been hospitable to the CAM fields and it's a good source for such research.

Check out the other tabs in this box to see PICO and searching in action!

1st: Identify PICO elements as specifically as possible:

Patient Population (or Problem) Intervention (or Exposure) Comparison (if known) Outcome Measure(s)
adults with cancer experiencing anxiety mind-body therapies no use of mind-body therapies

reduced levels of anxiety reported by the patient on a validated QOL instrument

2nd: Frame your clinical question using elements from your PICO:

Q. Are mind-body therapies effective in reducing anxiety in adults with cancer?

CINAHL search query: 

anxiety AND (cancer OR neoplasms) AND (mind body techniques OR relaxation techniques)

Filters applied: 2000-2012 (Publication Date); Academic Journals (Source Types); All Adult (Age)

Explanation of CINAHL search query:

The best database searches are combinations of logical keywords and subject headings.

Keywords: cancer

Subject headings (CINAHL uses MeSH terms): anxiety; neoplasms; mind body techniques; relaxation techniques

Why use parentheses in the search? (Think algebra.) Parentheses tell a database how to run a search correctly when it includes both AND and OR; CINAHL reads the search above as: first find citations with either or both terms within each set of parentheses, and then combine these results with the rest of the search, i.e. the mind-body relaxation aspect.

Filters/Limits: CINAHL's filters can be set from the main search screen before you run the search.

 

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