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9 things every student should know about before starting a literature search

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 Healthcare students will be expected to develop the right digital skills to help them to find good quality evidence. Whether you are presenting arguments in an assignment, researching for your dissertation or supporting a patient-care decision you need to be able to search effectively to find the right information.

We often refer to this type of searching as completing a literature search - that is running a search of the relevant literature such as guidelines, reviews and articles. 

We can help you to develop the right skills. There are 9 key steps that you can follow to help you to complete your literature search. Here is a (very) brief summary:

  1. Plan - create a plan of your search to help you to focus on what you need to look for and to make sure you don't forget anything.
  2. Breakdown your question - analyse your question and break it down into different parts so that you are clear on what you need to answer and what you should include.
  3. Identify search terms - from your question identify the keywords and phrases from the different elements of your question. Identify synonyms or alternatives that may be used. Identify as many that you can think of, and use a medical dictionary and thesaurus to help you. You'll use these words in your searches. 
  4. Combine your search terms - think how you can combine your search terms using boolean operators - words like AND, OR and NOT. You can combine search terms to focus your search, or combine terms to expand your search or to exclude certain results.
  5. Filter your results - you can use filters to focus your search results and exclude irrelevant content.
  6. Choose the right resource - make sure you search the right resources. You don't want to waste time searching the wrong type of content. You can choose resources that are specific to the topic you are looking for.
  7. Evaluate your results - once your run your research and have got a list of results, you need to evaluate these to check if they are good quality and relevant to your question
  8. Store your references - you need to keep the references of all the results that you choose to use. You'll often be asked to provide a bibliography and reference list.
  9. Refine and repeat - as you work through your plan and evaluate your search results you may find that you need to change your plan or add more search terms to it. This is perfectly normal - you're learning more about your topic as you search. You can refine your search plan and then repeat your searches to find more relevant information.

What can you do to develop your skills?

Complete our online tutorial Introduction to Literature Searching - You can complete your own search plan as you work your way through the tutorial.

Investigate all our Information Skills tutorials - We have a range of tutorials to help you through every step.

Watch our short video for a quick reminder of all the steps:


If you need more help, please get in touch with our training team.


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