Health Sciences Database Literature Searching CINAHL Plus with Full Text

CINAHL Subject Headings
CINAHL Subject Headings are comparable to MeSH terms for PubMed. They are the controlled vocabulary/thesaurus for the CINAHL database. Articles within CINAHL are categorized using multiple Subject Headings that correlate with the main subjects of articles. The use of Subject Headings makes searching more efficient and accurate.

To search for Subject Headings from the CINAHL homepage, click on “Advanced Search” on the right side of the screen above the search box.  

On the next screen, select “CINAHL Headings” underneath the search boxes.  

Enter your term in the search box: Quality Improvement. A list of matching terms and suggestions appear.   Select the term/s you want, then select the box “Add to search.”  

Enter your second term in the search box: patient handoff. Choose the equivalent term “Hand Off (Patient Safety) then select the box “Add to search.” 

Select "Filters" underneath the search box to limit search results to Peer Reviewed, “Past 5 years,” etc., as needed.  

Then select the “Search” box.   A list of search results appears.  

For each result, underneath the title, select Access options and choose PDF, Online Full Text, or Check UAB for availability.  UAB may have other full text availability.  If not, scroll to the bottom of that page and choose the Link “Request resource from UAB Libraries Interlibrary Loan” for free!
 

Example Research Question in PICOT format: 

Search strategies: 
Search using Subject Headings only - (MH "Quality Improvement") AND (MH "Hand Off (Patient Safety)")

More advanced search using keywords and Subject Headings: (MH "Quality Improvement" OR quality-improvement*) AND (MH "Hand Off (Patient Safety)" OR patient-hando* OR patient-hand-o* OR clinical-hando* OR clinical-hand-o*)

Use an asterisk at the end of a word to search for alternative endings of the word (this is called truncation).  For example, patient-hando* will search the database for “patient handoff,” patient handoffs,” “patient handover,” and “patient handovers.”

To search phrases, use a dash between each word. For example, quality-improvement will search for only the phrase “quality improvement” and not the words “quality” or “improvement” by themselves.