Palliative Care: Plan your Search

Why plan your search

At university, you are expected to find and use scholarly information as part of your learning.

This page will show you how to plan your search so you retrieve the best results. 

Step 1: Identify your key concepts

The main ideas (or key concepts) in your assignment question or research topic are your starting point for building a search.

Example:

Which cultural safety strategies have most improved quality of life for patients in palliative care?

The key concepts are: 

If you are working from a scenario, you can also use PICO to break down your question. Check the Evidence-Based Practice guide for more information.

Step 2: Brainstorm keywords & synonyms

Researchers will refer to the same concept using different terms. For example, when researchers are talking about labour, they could also say childbirth or contractions.

Track any terms you can think of in a table like this to include in your search.

Example:

Step 3: Building your search

Use Boolean Operators to combine your search terms. You can build multiple searches using different combinations of synonyms & keywords.

Watch the video below to see how it works.

Step 4: Run your search

Depending on where you are searching, you can put together your search string in two ways:

Single box

e.g. Library catalogue, Google Scholar, ProQuest simple search

Multiple boxes

e.g. CINAHL, ProQuest advanced search

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