CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature) is the well known index to literature in the fields of nursing and allied health. It is in the EBSCOhost platform and includes the full-text of hundreds of journals.

Other resources that are indexed include legal cases, drug records, clinical trials, professional publications, health care books, nursing dissertations, selected conference proceedings, and Evidence-Based Care Sheets.

CINAHL Plus with Full Text is an EBSCOhost database so here are some tips on searching in EBSCOhost:

The default is to the Advanced Search screen, with 3 "lines" of search.

• The default of Select a Field (optional) means that your search terms will be searched for in the main fields of each record - notably title, abstract, and subject headings. You can make your search narrower if you change this to TI Title or to SU Subject.

• If you want to find a CINAHL Heading that matches your topic, enter your search terms in the search box, tick the Suggest subject terms box, and click on Search. For more on this useful way of searching in CINAHL, see Searching Using CINAHL Headings.

• The default is to a keyword search so typing in speech pathology will search for speech AND pathology. If you wish to search for a phrase you will need to enclose the words in double quotation marks - eg: "speech pathology".

• There is a huge range of limiters available in CINAHL. You can apply these at the time of searching, or after a search has been run. Click on the Advanced Search link to see the limiters.
   
•  As well as a keyword search  - eg. "speech pathology" AND australia - you can also do a proximity search. If you type in "speech pathology" N4 australia, you will search only for articles where these search terms appear within 4 words of each other. (You can make the number whatever you like.) This is a good compromise between a phrase search, which might be too specific, and a keyword search, which might be too broad.

•  Many results will be available in full-text. Look for the HTML or PDF links to access the full article. For results where there is no full-text link, click on the Find it - CSU link to search for the full article in other CSU Library databases.

• You can do as much searching as you like, and return to the results later. To see previous searches, click on the Search History link which is beneath the search boxes.

• If you wish to permanently save articles and searches, or set up search alerts, you need a personal account/folder in EBSCOhost. Here's how to set it up:

1. At the top right of screen, click on Sign in.
2. Beneath the login and password boxes, click on the link for Create a new Account.
3. Follow the instructions and prompts to set up your new Account.
4. Make a note of your login and password for future use!

For more on searching in CINAHL, see the page in this guide on Searching Using CINAHL Headings.

For individual help with using CINAHL, please contact the Library or use the Ask a Librarian forum on the SPH516 or SPH423 i2 sites.

This short video (3:54) looks at using Advanced Search in CINAHL, and using Search History to combine multiple searches.

As mentioned above, CINAHL Plus with Full Text is available in the EBSCOhost platform.

If you wish to search more extensively within the EBSCOhost platform, you can search across multiple databases at the same time. There are two ways to do this ...

1. When already searching in any EBSCOhost database, you can click on the Choose Databases link above the search boxes, then select other databases in the tick-box menu. You will search across all the databases that are ticked.

2. Go to the EBSCOhost (Health) option in the list of Allied Health databases. This will open a package of EBSCOhost databases, all with health-related content.