Nursing

Many nursing assignments ask you to use scholarly articles to support your points. Scholarly (also called peer-reviewed or refereed) articles are written by experts and reviewed by other experts before publication. Their purpose is to share research findings with the academic community.

• See our FAQ for an overview of what makes a publication scholarly.
• Here’s an example of a scholarly nursing article (click the PDF link to read the full text).

Not sure what peer review means? Watch this short video from North Carolina State University for a quick explanation.

Tip: Scholarly articles often include: Author credentials and university or hospital affiliation Abstract, methods, and references Publication in a professional or academic journal

Video Transcript

This video provides tips for searching CINAHL, Google Scholar, and LibrarySearch. All of the tips shared for CINAHL will also work in Medline and PsycINFO (e.g. advanced search, asterisk *, quotation marks for phrase searching). Medline does not include a limit for peer reviewed articles - however, most of the results fall into that category (watch out for editorials and other non-scholarly material found in journals). For tips on searching PubMed, check out the PubMed - Find Articles on Topic tutorial.

Most search tools (Library Search, Google, Health Databases) will try and find every word you type in the search box. For that reason, it is best to avoid typing in complete sentences, and only use words that must be in the source for it to be relevant to your project. For example:

Question: What are nurses' attitudes towards patients with histories of drug abuse?

Step 1: Identify the key words in your question. 

What are nurses' attitudes towards patients with histories of drug abuse?

Step 2: Consider if these keywords have any synonyms (words that mean the same thing) or alternative spellings (e.g. American vs Canadian spelling of words like labor/labour). These synonyms will be helpful if you are not finding the results you expected or you need to make sure you capture all the available evidence.

Review: Tips for finding scholarly journal articles

Using Health Databases (CINAHL, Medline, PsycINFO) or LibrarySearch

• Don’t type whole sentences. Use keywords.
• Use AND to connect ideas: nurs* AND role* AND educat*
• Use OR for synonyms: patient* OR client*
• Use quotation marks for exact phrases: "nurse researcher"
• Use the asterisk * for word endings: nurs*
• Use the Peer-Reviewed limit. Helpful, not perfect, always check the article fits your assignment.
• Try Advanced Search. It helps you build searches step-by-step.

Do not type sentences into the search box! Google is looking for a source that contains every word you type in the search box, so focus on what is most important.

Use quotation marks "" to search for a particular phrase  e.g. "nurse researcher"

You can limit your results to journals with particular words in their title e.g. nurse patient communication source:nursing will only find articles published in journals that have the word nursing in their title like Journal of American Nursing, Advanced Nursing, Cancer Nursing, etc.

You can exclude particular words from your search by using a minus sign e.g. nursing intervention obesity -children will exclude results mentioning children.

There isn't a great way to limit your article search results to nurse authors. There is a limit for a nurse author in the CINAHL database, but it doesn't work correctly (it leaves out many eligible articles).

One thing you can try is limiting your search to articles appearing in journals with the word nursing in their title (e.g. Journal of Clinical Nursing, Advanced Nursing, etc.). This approach does leave out the many articles that nursing scholars published in interdisciplinary health journals, so it isn't a perfect solution.

LibrarySearch

In LibrarySearch, choose the advanced search option. Search for nurs* on its own row and limit that search row to Title (see below)

CINAHL/MEDLINE

In the advanced search, search for nurs* on its own row and limit the search to SO Publication Name

Google Scholar

From the menu in the top left hand corner, select advanced search. In the section for publication title, enter nursing.

Good news: As an MRU student you never need to pay for an article.

If you find an article in Google that blocks the full text, try these steps:

• Step 1: Copy the article title → paste into LibrarySearch. If MRU subscribes, you’ll see a link to full text.
• Step 2: Not available? Request it for free through our Interlibrary Loan service.

Using Google Scholar at home? Adjust the settings so MRU links show up:

1. Go to ☰ Menu → Settings
2. Select Library Links
3. Search “Mount Royal” and check the box for Full text @ MRU Library
4. Click Save

After setup: Articles MRU pays for will be flagged in your search results with a link like this: