CINAHL Plus with Full Text

Welcome to the CINAHL Plus with Full Text Database Information Screen! To find what you are looking for, browse the topics listed below.

• [About the Database]
• [Searching Tips]
• [Searchable Fields]
• [Definition of Fields]
• [CINAHL Subject Headings]
• [Free Floating Subheadings]
• [Evidence-Based Practice Limiter]
• [Clinical Queries Limiter]
• [Publications Authority File]
• [Index Browse]
• [Reference Browsing]
• [Copyright and Restrictions of Use]
• [Where to Send Your Comments]

About the Database

CINAHL Plus with Full Text

CINAHL® Plus with Full Text is a robust collection of full text for nursing & allied health journals, providing full text for more than 760 journals indexed in CINAHL®. Of those, 451 are not found with full text in any version of Academic Search™, Health Source® or Nursing & Allied Health Collection™. This authoritative file contains full text for many of the most used journals in the CINAHL index, with no embargo. With full-text coverage dating back to 1937, CINAHL® Plus with Full Text is a core research tool for all areas of nursing and allied health literature.

CINAHL® Plus with Full Text also provides indexing for more than 5,000 journals from the fields of nursing and allied health. The database contains more than 4 million records dating back to 1937. Offering complete coverage of English-language nursing journals and publications from the National League for Nursing and the American Nurses' Association, CINAHL® Plus with Full Text covers nursing, biomedicine, health sciences librarianship, alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health and 17 allied health disciplines. In addition, this database offers access to health care books, nursing dissertations, selected conference proceedings, standards of practice, educational software, audiovisuals and book chapters. Searchable cited references for more than 1,420 journals are also included.

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Searching Tips

There are a number of helpful tips and hints you can use to improve your search results. For example, you can use Boolean operators to link terms together; limit the search to a specific title; and /or restrict the search to a particular date range.

Note: Stop-words are commonly used words such as articles, pronouns, and prepositions. These words are not indexed for searching in the database. For example, 'the', 'for', and 'of' are stop-words. When a stop-word is used in a query, any single word or no word is retrieved in place of the stop-word. When searching strings that contain stop-words or a Boolean operator, it is necessary to use quotation marks.

Boolean Operators

Sometimes a search can be overly general (results equal too many hits) or overly specific (results equal too few hits). To fine tune your search, you can use AND, OR, and NOT operators to link your search words together. These operators will help you narrow or broaden your search to better express the terms you are looking for and to retrieve the exact information you need quickly.

USING THE "AND" OPERATOR: If you have a search term that is too general, you can append several terms together using "AND". By stringing key terms together, you can further define your search and reduce the number of results. Note: Unless you define a specific search field, the result list will contain references where all your search terms are located in either the citation, full display or full text.

• For example, type high risk AND injury to find only articles that reference high risk injuries.

USING THE "OR" OPERATOR: In order to broaden a search, you can link terms together by using the "OR" operator. By using "OR" to link your terms together you can find documents on many topics. Linked by this operator, your words are searched simultaneously and independently of each other.

• As an example, search high risk AND injury OR trauma to find results that contain either the terms "high risk" and "injury", or the term "trauma".

USING THE "NOT" OPERATOR: In order to narrow a search, you can link words together by using the "NOT" operator. This operator will help you to filter out specific topics you do not wish included as part of your search.

• Type: high risk OR injury NOT trauma to find results that contain the terms "high risk" or "injury", but not the term "trauma".
• To further define your results, type: high risk AND injury AND trauma to constrict the search to include all terms linked by the "AND" operator.

Grouping Terms Together Using Parentheses

Parentheses also may be used to control a search query. Without parentheses, a search is executed from left to right. Words that you enclose in parentheses are searched first. Why is this important? Parentheses allow you to control and define the way the search will be executed. The left phrase in parentheses is searched first; then based upon those results the second phrase in parentheses is searched.

Generalized Search: heart or lung and blood or oxygen
Focused Search: (heart or lung) and (blood or oxygen)

In the first example, the search will retrieve everything on "heart" as well as references to the terms "lung" and "blood", and everything on "oxygen".

In the second example, we have used the parentheses to control our query to only find articles about heart or lung that reference blood or oxygen.

Limiting a Search Using Entry Date (EM)

Using the entry date field (EM), you can narrow the search to a specific date. To search the most current articles of the database, the entry date field code is essential. For example,

• Type: critical care and EM 201207

In the example above, the entry month field will produce only results concerning critical care entered into the database in July 2012. Note: you can use a hyphen to indicate an open-ended date range. Entering a hyphen either before or after an entry month will find results "on or before" or "on or after" the date entered.

• Example: type nursing home and EM 201207- (to retrieve articles about nursing homes entered from July 2012 to the present).
• Example: type twins and EM -201207 (to retrieve articles about twins entered previous to and including July 2012).

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Searchable Fields

The default fields for unqualified searches consist of the following: Title, Abstract and Subject headings.

The following list will help you locate detailed information using field tags.

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Definition of Fields

The following table explains the contents of each field in a CINAHL® Plus with Full Text record's detailed display (not all fields are listed in every record).

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CINAHL Subject Headings

The CINAHL Subject Headings authority file is a controlled vocabulary thesaurus that assists in more effectively searching the CINAHL® Plus with Full Text database. Each bibliographic reference in the database is associated with a set of subject terms that are assigned to describe the content of an article. There are more than 14,000 main subject headings as well as thousands of cross-references that assist in finding the most appropriate subject heading. CINAHL® Plus with Full Text accepts the U.S. National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) as the standard vocabulary for disease, drug, anatomical, and physiological concepts.

CINAHL® Plus with Full Text subject heading terms are arranged in a hierarchy, or "tree structure," that permits searching at various levels of detail from the most general level to more narrow levels to find the most precise terms. The subject headings include indexing annotations, tree numbers, scope notes, entry vocabulary, history notes, and allowable qualifiers. The headings can be exploded to retrieve all references indexed to that term as well as all references indexed to any narrower term(s). Searches can also be limited with specific qualifiers (subheadings) to improve the precision of the search, and limited to major subject headings indicate the main focus of an article. The list is updated annually by subject specialists.

This authority file defaults to an alphabetical listing of subject headings. Browsing the list provides a relevancy ranked list of related descriptors.

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Free Floating Subheadings

Not all qualifiers (subheadings) are valid with all Subject Headings.

Qualifiers can be searched independently of the Subject Headings by using the appropriate two letter code in the word indexed Mesh search fields (MW and MJ). If you wish to associate subheadings that are not valid with a given Descriptor, you may ‘AND’ the Descriptor and a Free Floating Subheading.

Ex. MW Bicycles AND MW “SU” to retrieve surgical treatment of bicycle related injuries.

"Be sure to enclose your two-letter code in quotes so the system will not interpret your code as a search field tag (e.g. MW "AB"). You can also search the subheading itself, which is represented by the code (e.g. Abnormalities), but this will also retrieve results with other subject headings that may contain this subheading (e.g. "Abnormalities, Drug Induced")."

Abnormalities                      AB
Administration                     AM
Administration and dosage          AD
Adverse effects                    AE
Analogs and derivatives            AA
Analysis                           AN
Anatomy and histology              AH
Antagonists and inhibitors         AI
Blood                              BL
Blood supply                       BS
Cerebrospinal fluid                CF
Chemically induced                 CI
Classification                     CL
Complications                      CO
Contraindications                  CT
Deficiency                         DF
Diagnosis                          DI
Diagnostic use                     DU
Diet therapy                       DH
Drug effects                       DE
Drug therapy                       DT
Economics                          EC
Education                          ED
Embryology                         EM
Epidemiology                       EP
Equipment and supplies             ES
Ethical issues                     EI
Ethnology                          EH
Etiology                           ET
Evaluation                         EV
Familial and genetic               FG
History                            HI
Immunology                         IM
Injuries                           IN
Innervation                        IR
Legislation and jurisprudence      LJ
Manpower                           MA
Metabolism                         ME
Methods                            MT
Microbiology                       MI
Mortality                          MO
Nursing                            NU
Organizations                      OG
Pathology                          PA
Pharmacodynamics                   PD
Pharmacokinetics                   PK
Physiology                         PH
Physiopathology                    PP
Poisoning                          PO
Prevention and control             PC
Prognosis                          PR
Psychosocial factors               PF
Radiation effects                  RE
Radiography                        RA
Radiotherapy                       RT
Rehabilitation                     RH
Risk factors                       RF
Standards                          ST
Statistics and Numerical Data      SN
Supply and Distribution            SD
Surgery                            SU
Symptoms                           SS
Therapeutic use                    TU
Therapy                            TH
Transmission                       TM
Transplantation                    TR
Trends                             TD
Ultrasonography                    US
Urine                              UR
Utilization                        UT
  

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Evidence-Based Practice Limiter

The Evidence-based practice journal subset is applied to articles from evidence based practice journals (including Cochrane), as well as articles about evidence based practice, research articles (including systematic reviews, clinical trials, meta analyses, qualitative studies), commentaries on research studies (applying practice to research), case studies if they meet the criteria of the use of research and/or evidence based practice terms.

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Clinical Queries limiter

You can refine your search using specific search strategies designed to narrow your results in five research areas, Therapy, Prognosis, Review, Qualitative, and Causation (Etiology). Three strategies are provided for each area. High Sensitivity - the broadest search to include ALL relevant material. It may include less relevant materials. High Specificity - the most targeted search to include only the most relevant result set, may miss some relevant materials. Best Balance - retrieves the best balance between Sensitivity and Specificity.

Clinical Queries are created in collaboration with the Health Information Research Unit (HIRU) at McMaster University, and are designed for clinician use.

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Publications Authority File

The publication authority file is an alphabetical list of the journal titles included in this database. Any publication found in the product's data will be listed in this authority file. As a result, any exclusive search of a publication in this list is guaranteed to create results.

Index Browse

Index browsing allows the user to view all values that occur in specified fields in a database, along with corresponding hit counts. Access the index browse feature by hovering over "More" on the upper portion of the search screen and select "Indexes." Use the drop-down "Browse and Index" menu to choose the desired index. Indexes can also be searched using tags. Since browse-able indexes are phrase indexed, the exact form and spelling of terms as they appear in the database must be used in conjunction with the tags when entering a search manually. Indexes available for browsing in the CINAHL Plus with Full Text database are listed below. Tags for all fields included in the index browse feature begin with "Z" (e.g. "ZA" for Author).

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Reference Browsing

Reference browsing allows the user to extend a search beyond the initial result list to records that are cited by an article. These citation records can be accessed through an article's "References" link, or through the References search screen. See online help for a detailed description of this feature.

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Copyright and Restrictions of Use

The CINAHL® Plus with Full Text database is a bibliographic database which indexes over 4,900 journal titles. It includes original documents. Copyright in the database and these original documents are owned by CINAHL Information Systems. The database is intended solely for the use of the individual patron of the licensing party.

Copyright of the full text of journal articles, author abstracts and most other full text materials is the property of the publisher or copyright holder of the original publication. Text may not be copied without express written permission except for the print or download capabilities of the retrieval software used to access it. This text is intended solely for the use of the individual user.

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Where to Send Your Comments

If you have some comments about either the database or the software, we would appreciate hearing from you! Please mail your comments to:

Please submit any questions you have to:
http://support.epnet.com/contact/askus.php

For additional information on CINAHL Information Systems please see: http://www.ebscohost.com/cinahl/

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