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Health Sciences Virtual Library: GNRS 500 Conceptual Foundations of Professional Nursing

For Nursing, Public Health, Kinesiology, & Physical Therapy

Page Information

Your Librarian is Denise Gehring

This page is to help you in locating books and ebooks for the course Conceptual Foundations of Professional Nursing:

Description of the Course: This course focuses on the introductory concepts crucial to the socialization of second-career students to professional nursing. The history of nursing, the evolution of nursing in the U.S., the art and science of nursing, the legal and professional basis of nursing, the role of nursing in the health care delivery system, and current issues and trends in nursing education, practice, and research are emphasized.

Boolean Operators & Other Searching Techniques

How Boolean Operators Work

Placing the words “AND” and “OR” (also called Boolean operators) between your search concepts and synonyms can help you create a search statement that retrieves the most relevant sources.

As the diagrams illustrate, using the word “AND” reduces the number of results you get, by requiring that both terms appear in each result. Placing “OR” between search terms expands the number of results because it retrieves sources that use any of the words. Generally speaking, you should use “AND” between each of your concept terms, since you want to find books and articles that address all the aspects of your topic. You should use “OR” between synonyms, to make sure that you find closely related sources.

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Searching Techniques

Truncation Phrase Searching Wildcards Nesting
Broaden your search to include variant word endings and spellings. Enter the root of the word then the truncation symbol, usually the asterisk *. Use quotation marks " " around search words to search for a phrase - only use this around two or more words. Using the phrase search will help you narrow your results. Substitute a symbol for just one character. The most commonly used wildcard symbol is a question mark ? Use parentheses () to put search words into sets. Terms in the parentheses are processed first. Use nesting with AND, OR, & NOT.

Examples:

nurs* = nurse, nurses, nursing

religio* = religion, religions, religious, religiosity

Examples:

"end of life"

"spiritual care"

Examples:

wom?n = women, woman

m?n = men, man

Examples:

(screening or detect*) and lupus

(cancer* or neoplasm*) and "spiritual* care"

Required Materials Listed in the Syllabus

Other materials

American Nurses Association Code of Ethics

Current and previous editions of the code of Ethics can be found in the Library Catalog.