ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health Source: Basic Searching

Searching ProQuest will be much easier if you have established your research question beforehand. Once you have determined your question, do the following:

1. Identify the keywords that represent the main concepts of your research question. Here are some types of keywords that you may want to include:

• Diseases or problems being addressed
• Diagnostic or therapeutic interventions being considered
• Outcomes that should happen

2. Identify other ways to state your keywords. For example, "high blood pressure" can also be referred to as "hypertension."

When to use the basic search:

• You aren't sure what information is available
• You aren't sure how you would like to focus your general topic

The information retrieved when searching a general term like "fall prevention" will bring back A LOT of resources, in this case over 99,000.  That is due to the single search term used and fall prevention being a broad concept.  To decrease the results, use the limitors on the left side of the results page to specify the kinds of resources returned, the time frame or the subjects of the article.