Nurse Anesthesia

EBSCO (CINAHL & MEDLINE) Search Tips

• Using Search Fields
• Narrowing Searches
• Expanding Searches
• Searching with Subject Headings
• Proximity Searching

This page will cover a selection of search features of the EBSCOhost platform, through which Dugan Library has access to CINAHL Complete and MEDLINE.

For more specific guidance, use the Help link found on the top menu bar within EBSCOhost databases.

Using Search Fields

CINAHL and MEDLINE have a wide variety of search fields that you can limit your search to. A search that does not specify fields will search for keywords across the entire record.

Specifying Search Fields

How do you specify a field to be searched? There are two ways to to this when searching CINAHL or MEDLINE through EBSCO.

1. Dropdown Menu

Select Advanced Search → Choose the field you want to search using the dropdown menu next to the search box.

2. Field Codes

You can also manually specify field codes within the search box. For example, if you wanted to search for articles with anesthesia in the title:

TI anesthesia

You can specify different fields for different terms in the same search. For example, if you wanted to add a search for authors affiliated with Johns Hopkins to the previous search:

CINAHL: TI anesthesia AND AF "johns hopkins"

MEDLINE: TI anesthesia AND AU "johns hopkins"

IMPORTANT: Notice that the search is different for CINAHL and MEDLINE. While they use the same field code for Title (TI), CINAHL has an entirely separate field code for Author Affiliation (AF), whereas MEDLINE searches author affiliations in the main Author field (AU) as well as Author Address (AF).

To find information on database specific fields in EBSCO, go to Help → Database Help (bottom of the help menu column) → Searchable Fields

Narrowing Searches

If you are getting too many results, there are a number of ways to narrow your search:

• Replace a broad concept with a more specific one
  embolism → "pulmonary embolism"
• Combine your search with another concept using the Boolean operator AND
  embolism → embolism AND anesthesia
• Use one of the database filters to limit by factors such as date, language, or publication type
• Narrow your search to a specific search field. See the section of the page on using search fields.

Expanding Searches

If you are getting too few results, there are a number of ways to expand your search:

• Replace a specific concept with a broader one
  "pulmonary embolism" → embolism
• Include synonyms for your search concept using the Boolean operator OR
• This is an example of subject headings (MeSH for MEDLINE and CINAHL Subject Headings for CINAHL) and keyword synonyms for "pulmonary embolism" (in this case including "pulmonary infarction" as a relevant related concept):
  MEDLINE:
  (MH “Pulmonary Embolism” OR MH “Pulmonary Infarction” OR “pulmonary embolism” OR “pulmonary embolisms” OR “pulmonary infarct” OR “pulmonary infarcts” OR “pulmonary infarction” OR “pulmonary infarctions” OR “pulmonary thromboembolism” OR “pulmonary thromboembolisms”)
  CINAHL:
  (MH “Pulmonary Embolism” OR “pulmonary embolism” OR “pulmonary embolisms” OR “pulmonary infarct” OR “pulmonary infarcts” OR “pulmonary infarction” OR “pulmonary infarctions” OR “pulmonary thromboembolism” OR “pulmonary thromboembolisms”)
  • Although both MEDLINE and CINAHL use MH as the field for exact subject headings, you can note that CINAHL doesn't have a subject heading for "pulmonary infarction," while MEDLINE does.
  • Note that I put the full search in parentheses. This ensures that all the synonyms are grouped together before being combined with any additional search terms you might include in your full search (such as AND anesthesia).

Searching with Subject Headings

MeSH are the controlled vocabulary for MEDLINE, while CINAHL Subject Headings are the controlled vocabulary of CINAHL. These indexes are similar, but not exactly the same.

Controlled vocabulary (also know as subject headings or subject terms) are standardized terms applied to sources by human indexers or via automated indexing (the National Library of Medicine transitioned to automated indexing for MeSH in 2022).

Comparing Subject Heading Searching to Keyword Searching

• Precision (how accurate are the results in terms of relevancy): Results found via MeSH/CINAHL are more likely to have high precision than keyword searching. This is because MeSH/CINAHL terms should only be assigned to items that extensively cover that topic, as opposed to keywords that could exist as a passing reference in the record.
• Recall (how complete is the results list compared to the total pool of relevant items): MeSH/CINAHL results are mixed on the issue of recall compared to keyword searching. On the one hand, the fact that MeSH/CINAHL terms use standardized language means that recall can be higher than the use of keywords if that keyword search failed to account for a wide variety of possible synonyms. On the other hand, MeSH/CINAHL might fail to return relevant results that are either incorrectly indexed (the jury is still out on the final quality of automated MeSH indexing for instance) or relevant to the search, but not a primary enough theme of the item to be indexed on under the topic.

For these reasons, the most comprehensive searches will generally use a mix of both subject heading terms and keywords.

Using Subject Headings

There are a number of ways to make use of MeSH/CINAHL terms:

• Browse Subject Headings: from the top menu in EBSCO, there is a link to the subject headings for the selected database
  • Use the search bar to find relevant MeSH/CINAHL terms.
  • The results page will display the identified term as well as the hierarchy of terms in the tree, any of which can be selected.
  • Select the checkbox to the left of the desire term and select the "Search Database" button.
  • By default in the EBSCO platform (unlike in PubMed), searches will NOT automatically search for all terms under the selected term in the tree. To search for both your selected term and any sub-terms, select the Explode (+)button.
• Item Records: item records in CINAHL and MEDLINE will have a list of assigned subject heading terms.
  • Scroll down on the record to the section labelled MeSH Terms or Major Subjects/Minor Subjects.
  • Each term will be hyperlinked. Click on a term to perform a search in the database for that term.

Proximity Searching

Proximity searching allows you to search for a set of words within a given distance from each other. Searching just for keywords can fail because the words are not connected to each other. Phrase searching (using parentheses) can also fail in cases where the words can be in a variety of orders or cases where additional words may sometime be added within the phrase.

How to Use Proximity Searching in EBSCOhost

There are two different ways to conduct proximity searches in EBSCOhost.

Near Operator (N)

Place N# (where # is the number of words you want to allow) between your search terms to find terms in proximity to each other in ANY ORDER.

Within Operator (W)

Place W# (where # is the number of words you want to allow) between your search terms to find terms in proximity to each other in THE ORDER YOU ENTERED THE WORDS.

Proximity Search Examples

healthcare N1 access finds both "healthcare access" and "access to healthcare."

social W2 determinants W2 health finds not only "social determinates of health," but also phrases like "social and economic determinates of health" and "social determinates of cardiovascular health."

patient N0 physician finds "patient-physician" and "physician-patient." Using 0 for proximity means that no additional words can be added between the terms, but the terms can appear in any order.