Nursing/Allied Health Literature - Penn Printout, Mar 1994

The University of Pennsylvania's Online Computing Magazine

March 1994 - Volume 10:5

Upcoming on PennData: Nursing & Allied Health Literature

By Sherry Morgan

NAHL (Nursing and Allied Health Literature), a new health care information resource, will appear later this year amid the many database choices already available on PennData. It will include familiar PennData search capabilities as well as some special features. NAHL will be a useful complement to MEDLINE (MEDA & MEDB) for all health professionals, due to its coverage of patient care, patient education, special nursing care and nursing research issues, as well as allied health and consumer concerns.

Origins of NAHL

At the turn of this century, the nursing profession began to publish journals reflecting professional practice and education. However, at that time and for the next six decades, no organized method for identifying articles on nursing topics was available. In 1960, three hospital librarians, who had been independently indexing the literature for nurses at their hospitals, decided to combine efforts and produce a single standardized index to the nursing literature. They named it the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL). The first volume, published in 1961 by Mildred Grandbois of the Glendale Adventist Medical Center in California, included only 16 journals covering literature from 1956 to 1960.

Over the years, the nursing literature proliferated and diver- sified, reflecting the ongoing development and advancement of the profession. In response, CINAHL also began to expand its coverage. Although CINAHL became available as an electronic database in 1983, the print format continues to be published.

NAHL: electronic database

CINAHL and its companion electronic database, Nursing and Allied Health Literature (NAHL), now regularly index over 500 serials, many of which have abstracts that are included in the database. NAHL, the only health care database that comprehensively covers the nursing profession, contains virtually all English-language nursing journals as well as primary journals from 14 allied health professions. Some of the allied health fields included are emergency services, health education, cardi- opulmonary technology, physical and occupational therapy, respiratory therapy, radiologic technology, and social services in health care. In addition, NAHL selectively indexes articles from 3,200 biomedical journals (those more comprehensively indexed in Index Medicus and its electronic counterpart MEDLINE) as well as journals from education, behavioral sciences, management, and the popular literature. Included in NAHL's authoritative coverage of the professional nursing literature are publications of the National League for Nursing and the American Nurses' Association, citations to selected books, abstracts to doctoral dissertations in the field of nursing published since 1990, standards of professional practice, and selected conference proceedings.

Citations to the new, electronic Online Journal of Knowledge Synthesis for Nursing (OJKSN) will be included in the NAHL database. OJKSN is produced by Sigma Theta Tau, the International Honor Society of Nursing, and is edited by Dr. Jane Barnsteiner, Director of the Pediatric Critical Care Graduate Program at Penn's School of Nursing. NAHL's indexing of this electronic journal will facilitate immediate access to current, synthesized research information that has been peer- reviewed and that will ultimately guide nursing practice and research.

NAHL offers in-depth coverage of nursing as a profession, as well as nursing care concerns, methods, research, theory, emerging topics in nursing science, and new or controversial issues relating to nurses at all levels and in all specialty areas. To date over 140,000 records have been indexed and added to the database. Updates are bimonthly, and over 16,000 new citations are added annually.

Basic keyword searching

Searching NAHL can be done simply by entering any term or combi- nation of terms using the familiar "k=" keyword search prefix used by other PennData databases. For example: k=quality and health will retrieve citations to articles or special nursing publications such as:

AU: Lang NM. Kraegel JM. Rantz MJ. Krejci JW.
TI: Quality of health care for older people 
    in America: a review of nursing studies.
SO: ANA Publ  1990 #GE-13:  131 p.

Although this type of search technique is the simplest, it is not necessarily the most efficient. NAHL's special features for specific subject searching are explained and illustrated in the next section.

Note: The logical connector "and" is used above and in subsequent examples.

Subject heading searching

The key to searching this specialized database is to combine subject headings whenever it is appropriate. As in MEDLINE, special subject headings retrieve information in the most efficient manner. Subject headings include major and minor subjects and reflect the standard vocabulary terms from the Nursing & Allied Health (CINAHL) Subject Headings List, which is available in the Biomedical Library. By using standard vocabulary found in this list, you will be more likely to retrieve citations on very specialized topics.

For example, citations to articles that describe the stress felt by mothers during the postpartum period can be searched by entering the following request which combines two CINAHL subject headings designated by the two-letter field qualifier "su": k=stress.su. and postnatal period.su. This request retrieves citations like this:

AU: Gennaro S. Brooten D. Roncoli M. Kumar SP.
IN: School Nurs. Univ Pennsylvania. Philadephia, PA.  
TI: Stress and health outcomes among mothers of 
    low-birth-weight infants.
SO: West J Nurs Res.  1993 Feb; 15(1): 97-113.
SU: Stress; Postnatal Period.

Specificity with subheadings

To further refine a search using NAHL, you may use either topical subheadings such as "psychosocial factors" or "trends," or tertiary subheadings specifying age groups or geographic areas. An example of a topical subheading combined with a subject heading is: k=nursing.su. with trends which would retrieve the following:

AU: Lynaugh JE. Fagin CM.
TI: Nursing comes of age.
SO: Image J Nurs Sch.1988 Winter; 20(4):184-90.
SU: Nursing--trends.

Note: In this example "with" is used as a positional connector that ties the subheading "trends" to the subject heading "Nursing."

Special features

JOURNAL SUBSETS: Journal subsets, designated by the field qualifier "sb," are available for further specification. Each subset has a one- letter code which can be used to limit retrieval of information on a topic:

Allied Health (a)
Consumer Health (h) 
Core Nursing (c)
Nursing (n)
Peer Reviewed (p)
USA-Canada (u)

For example: k=diabetes mellitus.su. and h.sb. would retrieve articles from consumer health journals about this form of diabetes.

SPECIAL DOCUMENT TYPES: This feature specifies the publication format of an article or the presence of some special information in the article. It is designated by the field qualifier "dt" (document type). More than one document type may be used in a search request.

An example of how to restrict a literature search to a special document type as well as to a journal subset follows:

k=myocardial infarction.su. and n.sb. and research.dt.

The above search strategy would retrieve articles on myocardial infarction from the nursing journal subset, but would restrict retrieval only to research articles. A few of the many special document types available in this database include care plan, case study, CEU (continuing education units), computer program, forms, nursing diagnosis, protocol, questionnaire, review, and statistics.

More information

Classes on how to search NAHL on PennData will be offered at the Biomedical Library once the system becomes available. For further information please contact either Frank Campbell, Education Coordinator, at 898-9905 (campbell@pobox.upenn.edu) or Sherry Morgan, Nursing School Liaison Librarian, at 898-0855 (morgan@pobox.upenn.edu).

SHERRY MORGAN, R.N., M.L.S., is Nursing School Liaison Librarian for the Biomedical Library.