Evidence Based Practice in the Health Sciences: Searching for EBP in Cinahl

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.

The topic that I will be searching for in this example is "falls". I notice when I go through the search results that the term used in the subject headings is "accidental falls"; therefore, I use this as my search phrase instead. 

In the top box in advanced search in Cinahl, I will enter "accident* fall*" in quotes (to search as a phrase). You will notice there is an asterisk after the words "accident" and "fall" (this is the truncation symbol to search words with multiple endings). 

Then I will apply the following limiters & click on "search":

• Peer Reviewed
• English Language
• Evidence-Based Practice
• Exclude Book Reviews
• Published Date: Past 5 years

After you click on search, if you want to narrow the results to exclude meta analysis, systematic reviews, reviews, meta synthesis or abstracts (this will apply to some projects & papers so be sure you ask you professor whether you need to exclude these types of articles) then add the following:

• The 2nd line down - select "NOT", then add the following to the box: "meta synthesis" or "meta analysis" or "systematic review" or review* or abstract* (be sure you include the quotes to search these terms as a phrase). In the drop-down box to the right of the search terms, select "TI Title". This will exclude any articles that have these terms in the title field of the article. 
• Then the 3rd line down - select "NOT", then add the same terms as you entered in Box 2 to the box: "meta synthesis" or "meta analysis" or "systematic review" or review* or abstract* (be sure you include the quotes to search these terms as a phrase). In the drop-down box to the right of the search terms, select "PT Publication Type". This will exclude any articles that have these terms in the publication type field of the article. 

Finally change the dropdown menu to the right of  "accidental falls*" to "SU Subject". Doing this will limit this search term to the subject heading field.

Finally, click on "Search" (Click on the image below to view the search).