To run a basic search:
Enter your search terms in the search box.
As you type, searches matching your terms appear below the search box. If you see your term in the list, you can click on a search term to go directly to the result list.
Select any desired limiters from below the search box and click the Magnifying Glass to run your search.
From the Results List, you can apply additional filters by clicking the All filters button below the search box.
View article details by clicking an article title.
When Full Text is available, select a reading option (Publisher Site, Online Full Text, PDF) from the Access now menu.
Boolean searching is one of the most important and widely used methods used to search for articles in databases. There are opportunities to focus or broaden your search depending on how you use the Boolean Operators AND, OR, NOT.
Figure 1. How Boolean operators work.
Example Search 1. The researcher wants to know about programs that assist teenagers to stop smoking.
1. Concept 1. Search health promotion OR health education
2. Concept 2. Search adolescent OR adolescence
3. Concept 3. Search smoking cessation
4. Lastly combine all three of the above searches with AND.
Each concept can be search separately then combined in a separate search as in Screenshot. 1
Check the boxes for the searches you wish to combine and click the Combine search icon that appears at the top of the list.
Alternatively, the search can be written as one sequence:
(health promotion OR health education) AND (adolescent OR adolescence) AND smoking cessation
Simply select the desired limiters from below the search box and click the Magnifying Glass to run your search.
Applying filters/limiters at the end of the search is recommended.
Simply select the desired limiters from the Filters area below the guided-style search boxes and click the Search to run your search.
3. Apply truncation/substitution (these tend to increase the numbers of your search results.)
3.1 The wildcard (Substitution) is represented by a ?or # in CINAHL.
For example, type ne?t to find all citations containing neat, nest or next.
Use the # wildcard in places where an alternate spelling may contain an extra character. For example, type h#ematology to find all citations containing haematology or hematology.
3.2. Truncation is represented by an asterisk (*). To use truncation, enter the root of a search term and replace the ending with an * (asterisk).
For example, type nurs* to find the words nursing, nurses, nurse, or nurseries,
Also using the earlier example in Search 1: adolescen* will retrieve adolescent and adolescence.
3.3 Note: The Truncation symbol (*) may also be used between words to match any word. For example negative pressure * therapy will return results that include the exact phrase, negative pressure wound therapy.
4.Field searching. Search for an author in the author field and/or a keyword in the title field to quickly locate a paper that you may have seen in a reference list in a textbook or possibly in another research paper.
5. Using Subject headings in CINAHL.
Each article in a database like CINAHL (and also MEDLINE) is read and assigned several subject headings. The subject headings describe the main concepts in the article. By using the subject headings your search is improved it 'standardises' variation in terminology and language . for example: hypertension or high blood pressure.
In CINAHL , Medline and PubMed there are thousands of terms available. Subject groupings are arranged hierarchically. This hierarchical organisation of subject headings is sometimes referred to as a tree. The headings can also be referred to as MESH (Medical Subject Headings).
This tutorial demonstrates how to create a search using the CINAHL/MeSH Subject Headings functionality in the New EBSCOhost user interface.
Phrase searching.
When a phrase of two words or more is used to search an EBSCO database, the default setting is for the words to be searched for within 5 words of each other . To search for the exact phrase, use inverted commas around the phrase.
Proximity searching is a way to search for two or more words that occur within a certain number of words from each other. 
As shown in the screenshot, topical AND collagen give the greatest number of results because the words are searched independently not as a phrase. The phrase search "topical collagen" retrieved least results. The proximity operators N5 to N10 (N meaning Near) retrieve an intermediate number of results.
Not all records have the full text attached therefore sfx software tries to find full text in other Holmesglen databases. If the full text is not available then a Google Scholar search is offered. If the full text of an article is present in another Holmesglen database then direct links to the article in other databases are given.
