Nursing

Although most health science databases include a search limit for evidence-based practice or evidence-based medicine, sometimes these limits are too narrow. Using them will not provide you with all of the evidence-based results that are available within the databases. If you retrieve too few articles using these limits, consider limiting your results to scholarly journal articles and then evaluate the results one-by-one. Evidence-based journal articles will include a review of current research related to the article's subject matter. If an article includes a literature review or a discussion of current research as a foundation for the resulting information presented in the article, it likely qualifies as evidence-based. For more information on evidence-based nursing, see Evidence-Based Nursing: An Introduction.

CINAHL has a limit for Evidence-Based Practice. You can access it by clicking in the Evidence-Based Practice check box or by choosing Evidence-Based Practice under Special Interest. Both of these options apply the same limits to your search.

This limit applies a preset collection of subject terms related to evidence-based practice to your search.

Within CINAHL, you can also try limiting to the following publication types (* denotes high level evidence):

• Case Study
• Clinical trials
• Meta analysis *
• Nursing interventions
• Randomized controlled trials *
• Systematic reviews *

If you would like to select more than one category at a time, hold the CTRL key down each time you make an additional selection.

ScienceDirect is another good source for systematic reviews. Although ScienceDirect does not have a search limit for systematic reviews specifically, it does have a limit for reviews. If you add the keyword systematic in the With words in title, abstract or keywords field and limit to Review articles, your results should almost all be systematic reviews.

Note: only articles with the following icon are available in full text to Santa Fe students: