Use keywords and MESH (medical subject headings) or other subject headings/thesaurus terms that describe concepts in your research topic. Try a variety of search expressions for targeted results.

• Use quotation marks to search a phrase.
• Use an asterisk to search multiple endings of a term.
• Combine subject and keyword searching.

Examples:

concept 1 AND concept 2

opens new window"nursing practice" AND ethic*
ethic* = ethic, ethics, ethical
Truncation is a symbol (*) added to the root of a word to broaden a search to include all word endings.

opens new window"emotional health" nurs* AND strategies
Notes: For "emotional health" nurs* in the above search, since no boolean operator (AND, OR, NOT) is used between the phrase ("emotional health") and keyword (nurs*), the database does a proximity of 5 search. Therefore, the results will include the phrase (emotional health) and keywords(nurse/nurses/nursed/nursing) within a 5-word word range of each other, in any order in the results.

Click on a sample search below, then set filters, add terms and/or change databases to edit the results. Some searches are done in multiple databases, while others are in a single database. Try a variety of search as shown in the three sets of examples below.

Topic: Nurses and (Stress or Anxiety)

opens new windowDE "Nurses" AND "stress management"

Topic: Nursing Trends

opens new windowopens new window ("digital age" OR technology) AND SU nursing AND trends

opens new window opens new windowopens newwindow (MH "Nurse Administrators+/TD") (Searches for a subject heading with subheading TD. In this example Nurse Administrators with Trends asthe subheading)

Topic: Leadership and Nursing

opens new window opens new windowSU nursing AND SU transformational leadership

opens new window (MH "Advanced Practice Nursing") AND (MH "Leadership")

Notes:

DE = Subject (descriptor)
MH = Medical subject heading (MeSH, the National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary thesaurus); searches both major and minor headings
MM = Medical subject heading (MeSH); searches only major headings
SU = Subject