Here are some common search pitfalls to avoid and best practices to elevate your search results:
Keyword Conciseness: Aim for fewer, essential terms!
Never enter your entire research question as a phrase!
Instead of Importance of patient education in post-surgical recovery
try "patient education" AND post-surgery
Phrase Power: Usequotation marks for exact phrases.
When you enter pain management a database separates the words and looks for pain AND management.
Instead, enter "pain management" (with quotation marks around the phrase).
This tells the database to search for your phrase EXACTLY as entered.
Wildcard Mastery: Use the wildcard symbol * at the end of terms to capture variations.
EBSCO databases like CINAHL & MEDLINE search words exactly as entered. You must tell them if you want plurals or other alternate word endings searched.
Instead of Nurse, enter Nurs*.
You will get results for nurse, nurses, nurses', and nursing.
Surg* produces results for surgery, surgeries, surgical, surgically, and surgeons.
Learn to use Boolean Operators (AND, OR, NOT)
The Softchalk tutorial in the next section shows you how.
Soft Chalk Tutorials
Originally created for an EBDM course, these brief tutorials will help you with the fundamentals of searching.
Some databases use symbols to account for alternate word endings, spellings, or exact phrase searching. This tutorial shows commonly used symbols and their respective databases.
This 3-page infographic provides an overview of types of studies, the evidence hierarchies, and defines study types including systematic reviews, randomized controlled trials, and cohort studies.
