Master of Science in Nursing: Psychiatric and Mental Health Nurse Practitioner: Search Strategies

There are many different ways to search for information in databases.

Here is one way to get you started with searching:

1. Identify main concepts for your topic.
2. Enter the search terms along with Database Commands into the search box. 
3. Identify relevant results.  
4. Email or export relevant articles.

Search Tips:

• Keep track of the terms you've searched to avoid repeating searches.
• Look up subject or Mesh terms for your search terms and use those as keywords.
• Consider using a citation manager, such as Refworks, to export citations of relevant results along the way. 

Need help with searching? Ask a librarian for help.

What is the difference between searching Start Your Research versus a subject Database?

• Start Your Research
  • Searches just about everything the library owns
    • Books, Ebooks, Subject Databases (medical, literature, social science etc...), Streaming Video, etc...
  • Your results list will contain a lot of irrelevant sources
• Databases
  • Searches fewer resources such as journals, magazines, and newspapers in a specific discipline like Nursing
  • Your results list will contain more relevant sources

If you come across a citation to an article and you'd like to track down its full text, here are a couple of options:

• Start Your Research (SYR)

  When searching for the full text of an article, start by searching the "title of an article" (enclosed in "quotation marks") in SYR.

"qualitative study of determinants of ptsd treatment initiation"

• Periodical List (PL)

   If you're unable to locate the fulltext by searching the article title in SYR, next try searching the "journal title" in the Periodical List, which is a searchable list of print/online journals accessible through the University Libraries.