Physician Assistant

Title or Abstract Searching:

• searches for your terms in the title field of the record only or the abstract field only. PQ does not offer both title and abstract in one option
• will help narrow or focus a search
• when Title or Abstract are selected from the drop menu, the code is applied to the whole search box
• spelling counts - not all databases will offer autocorrect options

PQ - use the drop menu and select the Title option 

• or the Abstract option

Author Searching:

• searches for your words in the author field only
• authors frequently publish under various forms of their name (e.g. Smith, JA; Smith, J; Smith, John A; Smith, J. Aaron; etc.). It is best to search using last name with just the first initial.
• ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health - use the drop menu and select the Author option (see title search example)

                                                             

Place phrases in Quotations Marks

• e.g. “Health expenditures” or “intensive care unit” or "Calgary Family Assessment"

Truncation and Wildcards:

• Can be used at the end or in the middle or a word
• Offers a way to easily search for words with multiple endings, variant spellings, or word groups
• Symbols are not universal – check database help as needed
• Any terms retrieved using either truncation or wildcard characters are not considered when sorting your results based on relevance

ProQuest: ( * ? )

• An asterisk (*) replaces up to 5 characters
  • cannot be used as the first character of a search term
    • e.g. *ffect
  • Search for variant word endings
    • e.g.  nurs* finds nurse, nurses, nursed, nursing, nursery, etc.
  • Use within words to find multiple variant characters
    • e.g. equ*y finds equality, equally
  • [*n] denotes up to how many characters you want to truncate
    • e.g. nutr[*5] finds nutrition, nutrient, nutrients

• The question mark (?) replaces a single character. The ? will match for both 0 and 1 character
  • e.g. Wom?n finds women or woman; Assistan?? finds assistance or assistants

Caveat:

• Truncation will not execute when phrase searching using quotes plus the truncation on a single word. However,   can help retrieve the plural
  • e.g. "economic value*" can help retrieve "economic values"
  • e.g. "econom*" - truncation will not execute

Proximity searching allows for searching for two or more terms within a certain number of words of each other.

ProQuest:

• searching works the same as CINAHL (above) but the symbols are different

N/# or NEAR/# = terms appear in any order

• N/3 finds the words if they are a max of 3 words apart, regardless of the order in which they appear.
  • e.g. insurance N/3 reimbursement or e.g. insurance NEAR/3 reimbursement
    • insurance reimbursement
    • insurance for reimbursement
    • reimbursement practices of insurance companies
    • insurance approval and reimbursement

PRE/# or P/# = terms appear in order entered in search

• P/4 finds words that are within 4 words of one another, in the order entered
  • e.g. Covid P/4 protocols or e.g. Covid PRE/4 will find
    • COVID pandemic and public health protocols

    • COVID related protocols

  • will not find protocols for Covid