Health Sciences Library
How to Conduct a Search for
a Literature Review
Molly Higgins
M.Higgins@stonybrook.edu
Assuming you have already identified
the problem/topic that you are
investigating…
… then you’re ready to start your
literature search. For a literature
search, your search must be
systematic and exhaustive
Like this:
((Physicians[mh] OR Nurses[mh] OR "Internship and Residency"[mh] OR “Nursing Staff” OR Physician*[tw]
OR Nurs*[tw] OR Doctor*[tw] OR "medical practitioner"[tw] OR Clinician[tw] OR Resident[tw] OR Intern[tw])
AND (Religion[MeSH Major Topic] OR “Religion and Medicine” [MeSH Major Topic] OR Religion[tw] OR
religious[tw] OR Spiritual[tw] OR spiritualism[tw] OR Theology[tw] OR theological[tw] OR “Spiritual Care”[tw]
OR religiosity[tw]) AND ("Practice Patterns, Physicians'"[mh] OR " Practice Patterns, Nurses'"[mh] OR
"Outcome and Process Assessment (Health Care)"[mh] OR "Refusal to Treat"[mh] OR Attitude[mh] OR
Communication[mh] OR "Personal Satisfaction"[mh] OR "Social Behavior"[mh] OR Rationalization[mh] OR
Emotions[mh] OR Human Characteristics[mh] OR Achievement[mh] OR "Aspirations (Psychology)"[mh] OR
"Conflict (Psychology)"[mh] OR Drive[mh] OR Goals[mh] OR Intention[mh] OR “Ethics, professional”[mh]
OR “Moral obligations”[mh] OR “quality of life”[mh] OR “consciousness disorders”[mh] OR “advance
directive adherence”[mh] OR “interpersonal relations”[mh] OR “terminally ill”[mh] OR “Intensive care
units”[mh] OR “Professional Role”[mh] OR “counseling”[mh] OR “family planning services”[mh] OR “job
satisfaction”[mh] OR “cooperative behavior”[mh] OR “Nursing Process”[mh] OR “Nurse-Patient
Relations”[mh] OR “Holistic Nursing”[mh] OR “spiritual therapies”[mh] OR “Delivery of Health Care”[mh] OR
“Patient Care”[mh] OR “Cultural Characteristics”[mh] OR “Chaplaincy Service, Hospital”[mh] OR "Power
(Psychology)"[mh] OR "Personality"[mh] OR "Psychology, Social"[mh] OR "Decision Making"[mh] OR
“Terminal Care”[mh] OR "practice pattern"[tw] OR "clinical practice"[tw] OR behavior*[tw] OR Attitude*[tw]
OR Communic*[tw] OR "practice style"[tw] OR "decision"[tw] OR choice[tw] OR refusal[tw] OR Emotion[tw]
OR Conflict[tw] OR Disagreement[tw] OR Outcome*[tw] OR Understanding*[tw] OR Interaction[tw] OR
Dissent*[tw] OR “End of Life”[tw]) AND English[la] AND (clinical study[pt] OR Evaluation Studies[pt] OR
multicenter study[pt] OR observational study[pt] OR "Support of Research"[pt] OR validation studies[pt] OR
comparative study[pt] OR cohort[tw] OR "case control"[tw] OR "clinical study"[tw] OR "clinical trial"[tw] OR
“observational study”[tw]))
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Search at least 3 databases:
PubMed
Embase
Scopus (or Web of Science)
Google
Cochrane
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Within each database:
Test synonyms for each search term
Test Boolean operators
(AND/OR/NOT)
Consult controlled vocabularies
Check for related articles
Record your search strategy
And most importantly, search each
database until you find no additional,
relevant articles
Let’s try it!
Let’s try it!
P: obese teenagers
I: changes to diet and exercise
C: changes to diet
O: preventing type 2 diabetes
Health Sciences Library
Questions?
Molly Higgins
M.Higgins@stonybrook.edu
http://library.stonybrook.edu/healthsciences-library
http://bit.ly/1Q7pzYB