Searching Cinahl

Cinahl

Cinahl is the Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature and is the key nursing database and an excellent starting point for nursing, midwifery, health and radiography.

It has expert filters which enable you to refine search results by age, gender and publication.

Tip! There are embargos on some key titles which means that there is no link to full-text for the latest year. You can use the A-Z of e-Journals to check if the full-text is available in another UCS database.

Accessing Cinahl

From MyUCS you can access Cinahl via the A-Z of databases

Searching Cinahl

Enter your search words using the advanced search option.

Keep search terms for each concept on a separate row. These will

be automatically combined with AND

Searching Cinahl

The default search field is words in citation (leave the setting at

Select a Field). This searches for words in the article title,

subject headings and abstract. This is the best starting point.

If you get too many results you can narrow your search to a

specific search field e.g. TI Title (of article).

Broadening your search

Enter synonyms (words with similar meanings) to broaden your

search. Add OR between each word so that at least one word

from the row is included in the results.

Using truncation

Use * to search for alternative word endings e.g.

Compassion* finds compassion or compassionate Nurs* finds nursing or nurse or nurses Empath* finds empathy or empathetic

Limiting your search results

Consider limiting your search results as follows:

Publication year (to the last 10 years) To academic journals (rather than practitioner journals) By publication (to selected titles) Language (English language only) Gender or age group

Cinahl also offers expert filters on the Advanced Search page to peer-reviewed articles, research articles and more. These should be used with caution, however, as they can reduce your search results drastically.

Printing and saving articlesThere are options to print, save or email articles. There is no limit

to the number of articles you can save or print.

Click on the PDF or full-text link to display the article and then

select an icon from the side bar to the right.

Cinahl headings

Searching Cinahl headings is an alterative to free-text keyword searching. The headings help you find articles which use different terminology.

Mapping to Cinahl headings

Cinahl has a suggest subject terms option located above the

search box. Tick this box, enter a search term and click Search.

Cinahl then suggests corresponding subject headings.

Mapping to Cinahl headings

At the subject headings page, tick the box next to any

appropriate headings and click search database.