CINAHL - Coverage, Interfaces, Searchability
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Introduction
InterfacesCINAHL is available via the Ebsco interface. (Some nursing content can be located in Google scholar and PubMed). BackgroundCINAHL is an index of English-language and selected non-English journal articles about nursing, allied health, biomedicine and healthcare. Ella Crandall, Mildred Grandbois and Mollie Sitner began a card index of articles from nursing journals in the 1940s. The index was first published as Cumulative Index to Nursing Literature (CINL) in 1961. The title changed to Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature in 1977 when its scope was expanded to include allied health journals. The index went online in 1984. CoverageCINAHL (Cumulated Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature) provides comprehensive coverage of nursing and allied health literature from 1981 to present with over 1,800,000 records. It indexes 2700+ journals, selected books, dissertations, audiovisuals, allied and consumer health, biomedicine, alternative therapy and health sciences librarianship. It links to full text for select journals, standards of practice, critical pathways, survey instruments and government publications. Unique records include legal cases, drug and accreditation and clinical innovations. The controlled thesaurus to is unique to CINAHL and the allied health literature. Citations are assigned terms from more than 12,000 main headings, 68 topical subheadings and cross-references.
SearchabilityCINAHL accepts the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) as a standard vocabulary for disease, drug, anatomical, and physiological concepts; so there is overlap in the two sources. Terms are arranged hierarchically as "trees" to permit specificity from the most general to precise. Each heading includes annotations, tree numbers, scope notes, history notes and qualifiers. To retrieve all references with specific headings and narrower terms, the main heading is exploded (like Medline). In theory, research on a given topic is retrievable using CINAHL headings; however, systematic review require adding keywords to get around indexing limitations. Searches can be qualified with subheadings to improve precision where specific subject headings are the focus, or main descriptor. CINAHL headings are updated annually by subject specialists. Tutorials
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