Getting the Most Out of CINAHL: Search Tips

There are a number of tricks you can use to enhance your CINAHL searches and help you find the information that you need:

• Use Boolean Operators and parentheses to build your search
• Use truncation to broaden your search
• Use phrase searching to limit your search
• Use filters to narrow your search

Knowing how to use these techniques - on their own and together - will help you narrow your search when you have too many irrelevant results as well as broaden your search when your search when it's too limited.

Boolean Operators link concepts and are used to broaden or narrow your search. Briefly, here's how they work:

AND - finds results with your all search terms.  AND narrows your search (i.e., get fewer citations).

OR - finds results with any of your search terms.  OR broadens your search (i.e., get more citations).

NOT - finds results with only one of your search terms.  NOT narrows your search (i.e., get fewer citations).

For more help with using this valuable search technique, see the Boolean Operators guide (link below) for more detailed information.

Truncation is a search method in which symbols are used in place of letters or words to help you broaden your search (i.e., get more citations).  Here's how they work:

In CINAHL, the asterisk (*) represents any group of characters, including no character. Use it at the end of the root of your term.

Examples:

prevent* finds prevent, preventative, prevented, preventing, etc.

smok* finds smoke, smokeless, smoker, smoking, etc.

Searching for phrases narrows your search (i.e., get fewer citations). Here's how it works:

In CINAHL, enclose the phrase using double quotation marks (i.e. "shift handoff") in order to find citations that have those words in the exact order.

Examples from a CINAHL search on June 13, 2025:

shift handoff finds 128 citations
"shift handoff" finds 37 citations

patient falls finds 20,096 citations
"patient falls" finds 17,597 citations

Filters allow you to restrict searches to your specific needs. For example, you may want only English language research articles published within the last five years. CINAHL allows you to filter the search results to those specific parameters.

Some common filters to consider for your search are English language, articles from peer-reviewed journals, publication date, and articles about research studies. For searches related to age-specific populations, look for the "Age" options located in the bottom half of the list of filter options.

For more information about filters to use, please refer to the Filters sub-tab of this guide.

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