NUR 360 nurse authored research articles

Hi all,

Everyone's favorite assignment is back: "Find me 5 research articles on x where the first author is a nurse."

These limits are very hard to meet unless the student has a wildly broad topic, but if you arm wrestle someone into pulling out assignment instructions, you'll see requirements such as: "at least 5 articles or books written by a nurse, only 2 of the sources can be books, written in the past 5 years."

There's a research guide with search tips  http://uncg.libguides.com/nur360



Thanks, Lea

NUR 360 nurse as first author research articles

Today a NUR 360 student came for help finding ONE

• recent (past 5 years)
• research (you know the drill-no lit reviews)
• article
• where the first author is a nurse

Since I actually saw current assignment instructions and it's likely that other students will be coming for help, I created a NUR 360 libguide

Two approaches to this kind of assignment -

use a terribly narrow "first author is a nurse" limit in CINAHL 

OR

use Google Scholar or similar broad search to get the student going in the general direction, then explain how fun it is to look at the first page of each article until they find one with a nurse first author

If the student is open to a wildly broad topic, approach #1 is fastest and easiest.

FYI, the instructions ask students to use a topic that hasn't been covered in class.

Sorry the guide is all text. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Lea

Nurse-authored sources (NUR 360)

It's that time again - nursing 360 students are being asked to find nurse-authored sources for their research papers. Updated assignment instructions and librarian recommendations...

Assignment instructions (from NUR 360B course packet-make sure to ask student about requirements before trotting these out, in case the instructor gave additional requirements in person)

• Sources must include, but are not limited to, at least five nursing-authored books, journal articles or texts, though no more than two texts may be used.
• Sources may not be older than 2006.
• Sources that do not meet the criteria may be approved in advance by the classroom faculty.
• The journal “Nursing Times” cannot be included as one of the five main sources.

CINAHL tips

• Remember there is a "nurse-authored" limit in CINAHL
• Only use limits that are absolutely required (don't choose "first author is a nurse" limit unless you're feeling really sadistic)
• If keyword searching doesn't work, set up a subject heading search using CINAHL headings
  

Need more sources?

PubMed - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/limits

• The "Limits" link lets you limit to Journal subset Nursing (not perfect but will cut out lots of junk)
• Quick and dirty check for nurse-author - open a PubMed result and look under the author names for their affiliation. School of Medicine? Probably not a nurse. School of Nursing? Probably a nurse.

Get to full text by typing the journal name into Journal Finder. Look at the first page of the article. Most results will give author credentials next to the name, such as RN, CNM, etc. This page gives a list of common credentials for nurses and other health professionals...sorry for the wikipedia reference!

Need more sources?

The deeper you delve, the more labor-intensive the searching. We do have many nursing books in the basement. Maternal-child nursing books, for instance, are guaranteed to be written by a nurse, though you won't see this info until you look at the text itself.

Refer the patron to Lea if more help is needed.

Nurse author limits in CINAHL

CINAHL now has the ability to limit searches to nurse authors. This will come in handy for the Nursing 360 assignment that requires students to use sources written by nurses.