VNSG 1234 | Pediatric: How do I search CINAHL?

The most important thing to know when you're searching the databases is that databases do not work like Google.

You can put an entire sentence or phrase into Google and get lots and lots of hits:

That's because Google is able to interpret your search phrase, breaking up your search sentence into keywords and searching for pages that contain some or all of those words.

The databases don't work like that! If you put that same search phrase into the databases, you don't get any results:

This doesn't mean there aren't articles in the database about workplace safety and nursing, only that we're not putting in our search words the right way.

If you search the databases like you're used to searching Google, you won't get any results. Unlike Google, the databases can't interpret and break up your search phrase for you - the database searches for articles with the exact phrase you enter.

So what's the solution? Think in keywords!

Pick out the most important keywords in your search phrase. In this case, the most important keywords are:

• workplace safety
• nursing

Once you have a short list of keywords, you'll want to brainstorm as many as possible. Think of synonyms for your keywords, related words or phrases, related concepts, or more specific versions.

For example, you could think of more specific terms for "workplace": hospital, clinic, emergency room, etc. Or you could think of related concepts: standards, occupational health, regulation, reporting, etc.

No one combination of keywords will bring you back everything on a topic. You may have to do several searches in the database using different combinations of keywords to make sure you're not missing some resources.

Scroll down for tips on combining keywords for an effective database search.

Ever heard of Boolean Searching, Boolean Operators or Boolean Logic? Don't worry if you haven't!

All "Boolean" refers to are specific ways of combining keywords using the words and, or, and not. It's a way to expand or limit the number of search results you get in the database.

Combining keywords with or means that either one word, or the other word, or both words can be included in your search results. This is a good way to expand your search result to similar words: "workplace or place of employment."

Combinging keywords with not means to exclude a word from your search results. So if you want information about workplace safety, but not about hospitals, you could search "workplace not hospital."

However, the most useful Boolean operator is and. If you search the database using a keyword, and you get way too many results, adding another keyword and connecting it to the first one with and is a great way to narrow down your results.

That's because you're placing more conditions on the search. You're saying, "I only want articles that have all of the following terms: 'workplace safety' and 'nursing.'" And so the pool of articles that fits those conditions is much smaller than if you had just searched using one of those keywords.

We can understand this concept using a Venn diagram:

The blue circle represents all the sources that contain the phrase "workplace safety." The yellow circle represents all the sources that contain the word "nursing." The middle of the Venn diagram, where both circles overlaps, represents all those articles that contain both the words "workplace safety" and the word "nursing."

You can see that that area is smaller than either of the two circles, so you have a smaller pool of sources than if you had only searched using one term.

The pool is narrowed even more dramatically when you add another keyword, connected with and. So if we searched the database with 'workplace safety and nursing and hospital,' we'd get fewer results than when we searched with 'workplace safety and nursing:'

So the more keywords you have conneccted with and, the fewer results you'll get: there are fewer results that have all of your search terms. 

If you search the databases and find you have too many results, consider choosing more specific keywords, or adding another keyword.

If Chat is offline, you can email questions to reference.librarian@sjcd.edu