Information Skills for Health

Many healthcare-specialist databases will allow you to save your search strategy ie your keywords and how you have combined them, along with your search results. This means that you can re-run your search. This is particularly helpful if you are completing a project over a period of time – you can re-run your search to pick up new items. It also allows you to tweak your search if you come across extra search terms – you can add them into your existing search rather than starting all over again. By saving your search results you will keep a record of the items you have used for your assignment, dissertation or research project. Use the Save options in healthcare databases to save your search strategy and search results You can learn more about the databases we offer you by going to the Online Guides and Support section of our website .

Many databases allow you to use filters to focus your search even more. Typically filters are located on the left-hand-side of the web page presenting your search results. You’ll often be able to filter your search results by selecting a specific publication date range or type of publication. Specialist healthcare databases will often also allow you to filter by patient characteristics such as age or gender. Use Filters to focus your search results Complete our etutorial Introduction to Literature Searching to learn more about when and how to filter your search results.

A thesaurus is a defined list of related terms used to describe content eg articles. In databases, articles are often “tagged” with a thesaurus term. You can search for the thesaurus term. The same thesaurus term will be used consistently across articles; thus even though the authors may have used different terms in their articles, the thesaurus term will be the same. By searching for a thesaurus term you should find articles on the same topic, even though the authors may have used different keywords or concept words. Icons of articles with some highlighted with a tag indicating they have the same thesaurus term You can learn more about the thesaurus in the Cinahl database by completing our etutorial Using a Thesaurus .

Many of our databases allow you to use advanced searching techniques to combine searches. This way you can build up the searches for your keywords using OR and then combine the different concepts using AND and NOT. Graphic listing several concepts leading to one set of results For example: Your first search for your first concept may include all your different keywords and phrases for kidney disease, using OR to combine them. Your next search might be for your second concept hypertension – you’ll need to identify all the relevant terms for hypertension and combine them using OR. You can then combine both these concepts using AND for example as search1 AND search2. You can learn more about how to combine searches by completing our etutorial Develop Your Search Skills

Some resources will allow you to combine your keywords in different ways. One of those ways is to combine terms using the word “not”. Venn diagram demonstrating exclusion of one search term You use NOT to exclude a specific term from your search results. For example you may be looking for “kidney disease” but you don’t want any search results relating to hypertension. By searching for “kidney disease” NOT hypertension you will exclude all the items with the search term hypertension. You can learn more about how to combine search terms by completing our etutorial Develop Your Search Skills .

Library Search includes an A-Z list of the ejournal collection available at Keele University. Note that NHS-subscribed ejournals are not available via the Library Search interface. There are a number of different ways to look for Keele ejournals on Library Search. This blog post will just give you one simple route. 1. Start at the Library Search home page. Click the more option on the top menu bar – this is represented by the 3 dots The top menu bar includes the more option represented by 3 dots 2. Select the Keele eJournals A-Z option. A range of extra options are presented - choose Keele eJournals A-Z 3. Keele eJournals A-Z search interface. You are then presented with the Keele eJournals A-Z search interface, You can either browse through the titles available alphabetically or enter your journal title into the search box and click search. Screen-shot of the Journal search interface, including an alphabetic list In this example I have en...

Some resources will allow you to combine your keywords in different ways. One of those ways is to combine terms using the word “and”. Venn diagram showing intersection where 2 search terms overlap You use AND to combine different concepts that mean different things. This helps you to narrow your search helping it to be more specific. For example you may be looking for “kidney disease” but only in relation to hypertension. By searching for “kidney disease” AND hypertension you are narrowing your search about kidney disease to only include items which also include the search term hypertension. Here’s a short animation from HEE explaining the use of AND: You can learn more about how to combine search terms by completing our etutorial Develop Your Search Skills .