Nursing

Here are some search strategy tips to help you find relevant, focused research on your chosen topic.  For best results, start with a broad search and narrow it down by using the tips listed below.

Accessing databases from off-campus will require you to enter your NIC Student/Faculty ID and password.

Search Tips:

• Enclose 2 or more words in "double quotation marks" to find an exact phrase. Example:  "burn patients"
• Use OR to find synonyms (more results):  "oncologic nursing" OR "oncology nursing" OR "oncology nurses"
• When combining 2 or more concepts, include each concept in (round brackets also known as parentheses) and then
• Use AND to focus and reduce the number of your results:  ("oncologic nursing" OR "oncology nursing" OR "oncology nurses") AND hospice
• Use the asterisk (*) to find all endings of a word (for example, Canad* will find Canada or Canadian or Canadians).
  • The asterisk (*) is often used to find the singular or plural form of a word.  Just be careful where you shorten the word.  You may get too many or miss relevant results.  For example:  nurse* will find nurse OR nurses, but will not find nursing, because nursing is not spelled "nurseing"
• Use the database "limiters" such as English Language, Publication Date and Peer-Reviewed to further narrow your results to relevant, current, academic and trustworthy sources.

For more in-depth help on where to search, how to develop search strategies, and how to evaluate sources, check out the Library Research Tutorial

In order to fine tune your searches and find more focused results, you may want to explore some more advanced ways of searching.  Here are some hints to get you started:

1.  In the search box, you will see the "Select a Field" drop-down box.  If you initially get too many results, you may want to consider "selecting a field" such as TI (Title) or AB (Abstract) or MW (Word in Subject Heading).  This will find results where your search term(s) appears in those fields, rather than just a brief mention in the text of the article or the references list.

2.  Rather than using AND / OR to combine your concepts, you can do separate searches for each concept and then combine them later.  By creating SETS of search results, you have more flexibility in how you combine them. You will find the SETS of results by going to Search History which is found just below your search boxes.  In the Search History you will find that each of your concepts has been assigned a SET NUMBER.  You can either:

• Place a check mark in the boxes you wish to combine and then select how you want to combine them (Search with AND; Search with OR);
• OR
• Go back to your search boxes and type:  S1 AND S2 (as an example)

For example: Search History

S1 = "oncologic nursing" OR "oncology nursing" OR "oncology nurses"

S2 = hospice

S3 = S1 AND S2

3.  In the ADVANCED search other Search Options, include:

• Limit to Nurse as Author
• Age Group limits
• Number of pages in the articles

4.  If you wish to save your search to revise / revisit it at a later date, you can SIGN IN and CREATE an EBSCO account.  The SIGN IN option is located in the blue bar above the search boxes.  

There are other ways to refine your searches.  Be in touch with NIC librarians for more tips!  library.research@nic.bc.ca