Research Utilization and Evidence-Based Practice | search strategies
Search strategies can be designed for the CINAHL Plus and MEDLINE databases that use specialized terms to retrieve high quality studies. When designing a search strategy there are two components to be considered:
- Subject content
- Methodology
For a question like: "Is there evidence to support the effective use of therapeutic touch?" a CINAHLPlus search using the key words Therapeutic touch retrieves more than 1000 articles, but when you limit the search by publication type, restricting the results by methodology, you retrieve higher quality studies.
Here is an example of a simple search in CINAHLPlus: a keyword search on Therapeutic Touch retrieves over 1000 hits:
