Evidence-Based Practice for Nurses

4.4 How to Search for Evidence

At the end of this section, you will be able to:

‹ Perform various types of searches using basic and advanced source tools and search

techniques

‹ List four databases where scholarly literature of disciplines is indexed

Access to Content: Tools and

Techniques

There are three types of access to information: free ac-

cess, access paid by an institution, and access paid by

an individual. Most electronic sources provided by the

U.S. government are free access. Most libraries grant

free access to their holdings to those physically present. If the item is available

for borrowing, a library card is needed to check out the item. Although these

services are provided to patrons for free, the library is paying the costs. Nurses

can often access resources for free at their places of work. Like libraries, the

healthcare organization is charged to provide the services. Regardless, access

to electronic sources is being paid for by someone. For example, a nurse who

is self-employed may have to subscribe as an individual to access CINAHL.

General Search Strategies

Searching for evidence does take time, but knowing the organization of the

system and doing a search correctly can improve efficiency (Cleary, Hunt, &

Horsfall, 2009; McGrath et al., 2012). Novice searchers often begin by searching

for a specific type of document, such as a nursing research article reporting

outcomes of an experimental study. Although it is good to have an idea of the

evidence that you would like to find, do not discount other evidence uncovered

during the search. Sometimes a continuing education article that mentions a

particular study or a literature review in an article on a related topic may provide

sources not found through other methods of searching.

Another helpful strategy to locate evidence is to build searches both backward

and forward in time. This is sometimes called citation chasing. For example, a

nurse locates a single article about community preparations for bioterrorism. The

nurse examines the references listed to determine whether other sources on this

topic seem to stand out as foundational or noteworthy. If so, the nurse obtains

these sources and proceeds to appraise their reference lists as well. This strategy

is an effective way to search previous literature and often identifies the articles

FYI

Knowing a variety of search techniques—such

as use of keywords, Boolean operators, and

truncation—is essential to effective research,

while accessing the most reliable databases

ensures EBP.

KEY TERM

citation chasing:

Using a reference

list to identify

sources of evidence

110 CHAPTER 4 Finding Sources of Evidence