Cumulative Index of nursing and allied health literature

 discuss:

Researching nurse recruitment strategies can be a daunting challenge. In my quest to find scholarly research materials, the primary literature databases I use to obtain scholarly materials have been CINAHL (Cumulative Index of nursing and allied health literature) (Mateo & Foreman, 2014, p. 22), PubMed, and periodically Google Scholar.

CINAHL contains resources from over 6,700 journals (Elton B Stephens Company [EBSCO], 2021). I have utilized this search engine for several courses throughout my nursing education journey.  I find this research database more user-friendly than PubMed, as it allows me to obtain full-text documents and search by journal subject.  CINAHL will enable me to search for pertinent information and provide me with the ability to search for the latest, most up-to-date information.

PubMed, the largest healthcare database containing over 33 million biomedical literature abstracts and citations(National Library of Medicine [NLM], 2021, para. 2), tends to deliver information that seems irrelevant or not within current research recommendations of 5 years or less.  I believe these results are associated with the fact that I have been unaware of searching PubMed utilizing MeSH (Medical Subject Headings). MeSH allows me to drill down and be more specific in retrieving information utilizing key terms and subheadings to focus on particular topics. Knowing how to use MeSH in my search process teaches me a more thorough and productive way to search databases.

Google Scholar has always delivered a very vague and broad range of articles associated with my search subject as a research tool for finding scholarly articles.  Very rarely have I been able to see what I am looking for, though periodically, I may find a hidden gem within its search results.

Available research databases searches seem to provide general, outdated materials.  Once I understand how to use better and properly utilize searching PubMed with MeSH, I am confident I will find the most up-to-date information I am looking for.

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