CINAHL Overview
CINAHL Overview
CINAHL Plus with Full Text provides access to full text for more than 750 journals and indexes an additional 2,928 journals from the fields of nursing and allied health.
CINAHL Plus with Full Text includes resources from nursing, biomedicine, health sciences librarianship, alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health and allied health disciplines.
CINAHL
CINAHL Headings
CINAHL uses a controlled vocabulary called CINAHL Headings. CINAHL Headings are used to index the records in CINAHL. Each item is assigned the most appropriate index terms (i.e. CINAHL Headings).
Searching with CINAHL Headings is more accurate than searching with keywords. When you search with CINAHL Headings, all the search results are relevant to the topic because they are all indexed with that CINAHL Heading. When you search with keywords the database looks for the keywords in the title, abstract, and search record. As a result your results may include articles that only mention the keyword once.
CINAHL Headings are very similar to MeSH, the controlled vocabulary used in Medline and PubMed. CINAHL Headings and MeSH are searched the same way.
CINAHL Headings are organized in a hierarchy.
Each article, or resources, is indexed to the most specific term in the hierarchy.
Sometimes you may want to search a topic and include every topic that is more specific than that topic. You can do this by using Explode in the CINAHL Headings search.
To Explode a CINAHL Heading:
- Search CINAHL Headings for the topic,
- click the Explode box
- click on Search Database
- when you run the search it will add a + to the search term, for example: (MH "Neoplasms+")
As you search in the database, you can select certain options, known as limiters, to make your search results fit with your research needs or the instructions in your assignment. Often, professors provide guidelines on the type of publication or when the article was published.
Common Limiters
Full Text
- All your search results will be Full text.
Peer Reviewed
- Search results will only include articles that are Peer Reviewed.
Date Range
- Search results published within a certain date range.
Advanced Limiters
Journal Subset
- Limit your search results to nursing journals by selecting Core Nursing or Nursing.
- Note: Limiting your search with the Nursing limiter in the Journal Subset is more effective than limiting by First Author is Nurse or Any Author is Nurse. Only use the First Author is Nurse or Any Author is Nurse limiters if you are required to find an article by a nurse.
Publication Type
- Limit your search results to research articles or evidence-based publication types such as Meta Analysis, Randomized Controlled Trial, Systemic Review.
- Note: Limiting by Publication Type is more effective than limiting to Evidence-Based Practice. Please do not use the Evidence-Based Practice limiter.
Create a free account in EBSCOhost to save item records or searches.
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Go into any EBSCOhost database
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Click on Sign In
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Click on Create a new Account
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Fill in the information
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Do use your VSU email address.
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You do not have to use your BlazeVIEW username and shouldn't use your BlazeVIEW password, create a new one.
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Your password must be "strong" (with a green check mark) or the system will not accept it.
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Once you are logged into an EBSCOhost database, you will see a small yellow icon that reads "My"
Save item records in your folder.
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When you find a book record, article record, etc. that you want to keep...
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Click on the blue folder icon to add it to your folder
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The blue folder icon is available on the search results page and in the item's record
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Warning! If you add a record to your folder but you are not logged in, it will disappear when you close the browser. Be sure you are logged in!
