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Nursing

Basic search tips and strategies for nursing students

Finding Nurse Authors

Important Limitations

None of the recommendations on this page are foolproof ways to identify every article authored by a nurse. Here are several reasons why these strategies may miss nurse authors:

  1. Some publications don't include author credentials or affiliations in their database records.
  2. There are a huge number of nursing credentials. These searches look for some of the most common ones, but authors may list a more obscure one (and may not list all of the credentials they possess).

When to Use These Search Strategies

These search strategies work best when your topic search terms are giving you are large number of results. If you initial search returns a small number of articles (say 50 or fewer), you may be better off checking the articles directly for nurse authors.

CINAHL Complete

There are two main ways to limit to nurse authors in CINAHL.

Using the Advanced Search Limiters

CINAHL is unique in having an option to limited to nurse authors built into the database. Follow these steps:

  1. Select "Advanced Search" below the main search box.
    Image of CINAHL search box identifying the location of advanced search
  2. Put your topic search terms in the search box(es) as you would for any other search.
    CINHAL advanced search with arrows to nurse author limiter boxes
  3. Scroll down until you see the check boxes "First Author is Nurse" and "Any Author is Nurse." Select the box you prefer. "Any Author is Nurse" will return more records.
  4. Select the "Search" button.

Warning: The built in limiter in CINAHL is convenient and provides high confidence that retrieved articles are authored by a nurse, however often misses articles that are nurse authored. If you use it and get few or no results, try a different strategy.

Using the Affiliation Search Field

Searching the Affiliation database field (AF in CINAHL) helps you find articles where the authors nursing credentials (such as RN, NP, MSN, and DNP) or affiliation with a nursing school are recorded. Follow these steps:

  1. Type your topic keywords into the search box.
  2. After your keywords copy and paste the following search terms:
    AND ((AF nurs*) OR (AF RN) OR (AF NP) OR (AF DNP) OR (AF MSN NOT msn.com))
  3. Select the "Search" button.

PubMed

Using the Affiliation Search Field

Searching the Affiliation database field (ad or affiliation in PubMed) helps you find articles where the authors nursing credentials (such as RN, NP, MSN, and DNP) or affiliation with a nursing school are recorded. Follow these steps:

  1. Type your topic keywords into the search box.
  2. After your keywords copy and paste the following search terms:
    AND ("nurs*"[ad] OR "RN"[ad] OR "NP"[ad] OR "DNP"[ad] OR ("MSN"[ad] NOT "msn.com"[ad]))
  3. Select the "Search" button.