A-Z Databases: CINAHL Ultimate

You can access CINAHL, to find good quality journal articles on professional practice in nursing, midwifery, allied health professions and eEvidence-based practice in health settings, by clicking the link below.

Remember to look for the 'Access via your institution' option then use your UWS email and password.

Learn how to perform an advanced search on EBSCOhost Research Platform databases, e.g. CINAHL Complete.

EBSCO Tutorials (2022) EBSCOhost Advanced Searching - Tutorial. Available at: https://youtu.be/OsD0ZH1hx4o (Accessed: 7 April 2022).

Advanced Search

Typing a sentence into a search engine or database will not search resources effectively.

Consider the key words and/ or phrases that describe what you want to search (e.g. nursing students).

Enter these in the search boxes provided.

You can use various search techniques to add in extra terms, combine multiple topics, narrow results down and get more useful results.  These include:

• Phrase search - including the terms in quotation marks to ensure they appear together (e.g. "home care").
• Boolean search:
  • AND (+) - narrows down the results. All connected terms must be included in the results (e.g. nursing students AND social media).
  • OR (|) - broadens out the results. Either connected term can be included in the results (e.g. "cerebrovascular accident" OR CVA OR stroke).
  • NOT (-) narrows down the results. The second term must be excluded from the results (e.g. dementia NOT senile).
• Truncation symbol * can be helpful but should be used with caution.  For example, nurs* will find nurse, nurses and nursing ... but also nursery.

Use the available filters, e.g. to the left of your results list, to refine your search by date range, language or content type, among others.

Restricting the search to full text items

You can select the 'Full Text' option in the 'Limits' panel to restrict the results to articles which you can read in full.

If not, the full text of some items will be available by following the listed 'Check Primo OneSearch for availability' links. 

For others, a free copy may be available on the internet provided under an open access arrangement. Use Google Scholar or Open Access Button to check. Type in one author's surname and add the title of the article in quotation marks (to look for the words in the same order). If the article is freely available, you will see a PDF or HTML notation beside the citation.

An alternative to keyword searching is to use the in-built CINAHL Subject Headings - a menu option above the search boxes.

1. Browse to find relevant subject terms,
2. Click on the listed subject heading to see a subject breakdown,
3. Choose to "Explore" all entries available or restrict your results to one or more of the listed subheadings. See accompanying Scope Notes for advice. 
4. Select "Search database".

These results can then be combined with other search terms, and/ or further filtered, as above.

• Restricting search results to UK

  • The 'UK and Ireland' geographic filter refers to where the journal is published so has limited relevance for individual articles.

• Saving searches or results for access at a later date

  • To save specific articles, or your searches, for viewing in later search sessions, sign up for a personal folder.  See EBSCO's Create a personal account  video for details.  

• Searching multiple databases

  • Click the 'Choose databases' option, above the search boxes, to simultaneously run your search on CINAHL and another another database on the EBSCOhost research platform. 

• Referencing

  • Click the article's title then select the 'Permalink' option (on the right) to generate an accessible URL to include in your reference list.  Alternatively, click the 'Cite' option then view the appropriate entry, e.g. 'Harvard'.  [The default URL is customised to a user session so generates error messages whenever used by another user.]
• Follow EBSCO Publishing on Twitter - @EBSCO
• Watch videos on EBSCO Tutorials YouTube channel.

Accessibility Statement

This work in this guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.