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Literature searching for Health Sciences and Medicine

A guide for medical, dentistry and health sciences students undertaking a literature search.

How do you approach a complex search?

 

Start
simple

Exploratory searches are great for identifying keywords and building knowledge.

 

An exploratory search is a quick, simple version of your search. You are trying to find relevant literature, search terms and authors.

  • Use keywords from your research question. No need for advanced search techniques.
  • You can use any databases, but Google Scholar or PubMed are common choices.
     

> Example in Google Scholar

> Example in PubMed

Plan &
Document

Plan before you start and document as you go.
 

 

The level of planning is up to you. But, as searching is an iterative process, we suggest to record what you have done.

  • Identify search terms from:
    • your knowledge
    • exploratory searches
    • relevant articles (seed articles)
  • Construct search
  • Record your results and changes in your search
  • Sign up for database accounts to save searches.


The steps below show how to plan a search.

Searching steps

You can follow these steps in order, however the search process is iterative, steps are returned to and modified.
 

 

The relationship between moral distress and burnout
in frontline workers during COVID-19

 
 
 
 

CONCEPT 1

moral distress

CONCEPT 2

burnout

CONCEPT 3

frontline workers

CONCEPT 4

covid-19 

 

They can have a similar meaning (alternative terms) or be related concepts (broader terms or narrower terms).

CONCEPT 1

moral distress

 

CONCEPT 2

burnout

disengagement

CONCEPT 3

frontline workers

nurses

doctors

paramedics

CONCEPT 4

covid-19 

SARS-CoV-2

pandemic

 

OR

terms relating to the same concept

(doctors OR nurses)

 

AND

join concepts together

(doctors OR nurses AND moral distress)

 

   phrase

words in exact order

((doctors OR nurses) AND "moral distress")


We can apply OR to connect keywords  and AND to connect concepts to our table.

CONCEPT 1



moral distress

 

CONCEPT 2


burnout

OR

    disengagement

AND

CONCEPT 3

   
  frontline workers

OR

   nurses

AND

OR

doctors

OR

    paramedics

 

CONCEPT 4

   
   covid-19 

OR

     SARS-CoV-2

AND

OR

pandemic

Truncation searches for variation of word endings.

TRUNCATION

same word,
different ending

frontline worker*
= frontline worker, frontline workers

Useful for:

  • saving space, making your search easier to read

You don't need to use truncation.

Think carefully about possible words created. This is a common cause of big result numbers and irrelevant results.

pandemic* = pandemic, pandemics

pandem* = pandemic, pandemics, pandemonium

pand* = pandemic, pandemics, pandemonium, pander, pandering, panda, pandan, pandanus

If truncation is bringing back irrelevant results, you can search for all the variations directly.

For further examples and activities see the tutorial on this guide. 
 


Proximity searching is based on how closely two or more search terms appear in the results.

PROXIMITY

words within a
specific number

frontline ADJ3 worker
=
frontline workers
workers on the frontline
frontline health care workers

  Note: ADJ is used in Ovid databases, check other database for correct letters

Useful for:

  • concepts expressed by multiple phrases
  • focus on a particular meaning of a word when you have irrelevant results

Proximity not working as hoped?

If proximity searching is back irrelevant results, you can

  • try and tweak the adjacency numbers
  • change to AND search
  • change to phrases 

For further examples and activities see the tutorial on this guide. 
 

Subject headings are standard descriptions used by databases to help with searching. They help retrieve articles on a topic, even if different words are used in the text.

Watch this video (4 minutes) for an beginners overview of subject headings.  

 

For further instructions and activities on Subject Headings see the tutorial on this guide.


Search string

Applying all steps to our table we can create a single search string.

We need to use round brackets to show the databases what to keep together.

"moral distress" AND (burnout OR disengagement) AND ((frontline adj3 worker*) OR doctor* OR nurse* OR paramedic*) AND ("covid 19" OR "SARS-CoV-2" OR pandemic)

 

Line-by-line search

Although we can use this search string directly in the search box, for Advanced searching we generally take a line-by-line approach for more control.

Each database works slightly differently, but the principles are the same. Each search term is numbered and you join together keywords within a concept using OR (see line 4 below), and concepts with AND (see line 14 below).

1. "moral distress"    

2. burnout    

3. disengagement    

4. 2 OR 3

5. (frontline adj3 worker*)    

6. nurse*    

7. doctor*    

8. paramedic*

9. 5 OR 6 OR 7 OR 8

10. "covid 19"

11. pandemic

12. "SARS-CoV-2"

13. 10 OR 11 OR 12 

14. 1 AND 4 AND 9 AND 13

 

Watch this video (3 minutes) for line-by-line searching in Ovid, and how to troubleshoot unexpected results.  

 


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