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The DNP Project

Scholarly Information

In your Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) project, utilizing scholarly information is essential, especially for quality improvement or evidence-based project implementation. Begin by conducting comprehensive literature reviews to identify relevant research, theories, and best practices. Use scholarly databases and peer-reviewed journals to gather evidence informing your project's design, methodology, and interventions. Evaluate the credibility, relevance, and applicability of the literature to your context and population. Incorporating evidence-based guidelines and frameworks strengthens the theoretical foundation of your DNP project and enhances its potential impact on healthcare outcomes. Grounding your work in scholarly information not only validates its rigor but also contributes to nursing knowledge and practice.

Searching for scholarly information using the PICO framework involves a structured approach to formulating clinical questions and identifying relevant evidence for evidence-based practice. PICO stands for Population, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome.

  • Population: Begin by clearly defining the population or patient group you are interested in studying. This includes demographic characteristics, health conditions, and any other relevant factors.
  • Intervention: Specify the intervention or treatment you are investigating. This could be a therapy, medication, procedure, or any other healthcare intervention aimed at addressing the health issue in your population.
  • Comparison: Determine if there is a specific comparison group or alternative intervention you want to compare your primary intervention against. This could be standard care, a placebo, or another treatment option.
  • Outcome: Identify the desired outcomes or endpoints you are interested in measuring. These could be clinical outcomes (e.g., mortality, symptom improvement) or patient-centered outcomes (e.g., quality of life, satisfaction).

To search for scholarly information using PICO:

  1. Identify keywords: Based on each component of your PICO question, generate relevant keywords and phrases to use in your search. These could include terms related to the population, intervention, comparison, and outcomes.
  2. Construct search queries: Use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) to combine your keywords effectively. For example, "(Population) AND (Intervention)" or "(Population) AND (Intervention) AND (Outcome)".
  3. Select appropriate databases: Choose relevant databases for your topic, such as PubMed/MEDLINE, CINAHL, or Cochrane Library. Each database may have its own unique search interface and features.
  4. Execute search: Input your search query into the selected databases and execute the search. Refine your search as needed by adjusting keywords, filters, and search strategies.
  5. Evaluate search results: Review the search results to assess their relevance and quality. Pay attention to study designs, publication types, and dates to ensure they align with your research needs.
  6. Retrieve and review articles: Retrieve full-text articles of the selected studies and critically appraise them for their validity, reliability, and applicability to your clinical question.

By following the PICO framework and conducting systematic searches using relevant keywords and databases, you can effectively find scholarly information to inform evidence-based practice and clinical decision-making.

Search Strategies

Subject headings are standardized terms used to categorize and index scholarly articles based on their content. They provide a controlled vocabulary that helps organize literature in databases, making it easier for researchers to find relevant information on specific topics. Subject headings are typically assigned by database indexers or authors during the publication process and are used to describe the main themes, concepts, and subjects covered in an article. By using subject headings, researchers can conduct more precise and efficient searches, improving the accuracy and relevance of their results when exploring scholarly literature.

  • In PubMed, subject headings are known as Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). MeSH terms cover a wide range of biomedical concepts and are curated by experts to ensure relevance and accuracy. They are particularly applicable to biomedical research and clinical practice, providing a comprehensive vocabulary for searching PubMed's vast collection of articles.
  • In CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature), subject headings are tailored to the needs of nurses, nurse practitioners, and other healthcare professionals. They focus on topics relevant to nursing practice, patient care, and healthcare administration, making them highly applicable and relevant to nursing and allied health research.
  • In Embase, subject headings are known as Emtree terms. Emtree terms cover a wide range of topics beyond just pharmaceutical information, including biomedical research, clinical practice, and healthcare administration. They are designed to meet the needs of researchers and practitioners across various disciplines within the biomedical and healthcare fields. Emtree terms provide comprehensive coverage of literature related to topics such as disease mechanisms, diagnostic procedures, treatment modalities, and healthcare policy.

Once you have identified the key concepts of your research question (see "Developing a Question"), you can use those concepts to develop keywords for your search strategy. The following tips and techniques will help you design a precise and relevant search strategy.

Keywords are any words you might use to search the record of an article, book, or other material in library databases. The database searches through the metadata (such as title, authors, publication, abstract, etc.) to find resources that contain the word you searched, and may also search through the full text of the material.

Keywords are most successful when you're searching for the words that the authors use to describe the research topic, as most databases will search for those specific words within the record of the article. To increase your chance of returning relevant results, consider all of the words that might be used to describe the research you're trying to find, and try some of these out in sample searches to determine which words return the best results.

Search Tips - Keywords

  • Search for singular and plural terms together: (physician OR physicians)
  • Search for both the American and British spelling of words: (behavior OR behaviour)
  • Search for synonyms of terms together: (teenager OR adolescent)
  • Search for phrases inside of quotation marks: ("young adult")

Use Boolean operators to combine keywords for more precise search results. 

AND - If the term must be included in your search:

influenza AND vaccine

OR - If terms are interchangeable, i.e. synonyms. Place OR'd terms within parentheses:

(influenza OR flu) AND vaccine

NOT - If a term should not be included in your search. This Boolean operator is rarely necessary for literature reviews.

(influenza OR flu) AND vaccine NOT H1N1

Note how we've used parentheses in the examples above. Search strings like these are similar to mathematical equations, where you perform the actions within the parentheses before proceeding from left to right to run the search. For example, using the search [(influenza OR flu) AND vaccine] will find results that have a term relating to influenza/flu, as well as the term vaccine.

If we moved the parentheses, it would be a very different search. [influenza OR (flu AND vaccine)] will provide results that use the term influenza, as well as results that use both the terms flu and vaccine. This means you would get results having to do with influenza but perhaps nothing to do with vaccination. 

Here are a few examples of how this search would be different depending on the arrangement of booleans and keywords. The area highlighted in pink represents the search results that would be returned with this search.

(vaccine AND influenza) OR (influenza AND flu) OR (vaccine AND flu)

(influenza OR flu) AND vaccine

flu OR (vaccine AND influenza)

Truncation allows you to quickly include all variations of a word in your search. Use the root of the keyword and add an asterisk (*). For example:

nurs* = nurse, nurses, nursing, nursery

IMPORTANT: Notice that "nursery" is also retrieved in the above search. Truncation will save you from having to include a large number of synonyms, but it will also add a certain number of irrelevant results. You can limit this effect by using the NOT Boolean operator, i.e. NOT nursery.

Wild cards allow you to replace a letter in a keyword to retrieve all variations of the spelling. For example:

p?ediatric = pediatric, paediatric

Databases & Finding Articles

Databases are online collections of information, such as scholarly articles, newspapers, etc. There are three of the most common databases listed below that you can use as part of your search process. These databases sometimes hold the full text of the articles, but often they act as indexes, which include metadata about the article (such as title, abstract), but not the article itself. When this happens, there is a "Find it at WSU" button that will bring you into the library's subscriptions to identify where the full text lives. Expect to find and use this button often, as we have a wealth of information available across many different databases. Even when a given article is not available immediately, this "Find it at WSU" button will bring you to the option to "Get it For Me", an easy way to request the article through interlibrary loan. This process is often very quick, and there is no cost to request articles. 

PubMed

CINAHL

Embase

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