Nursing Research Guide: CINAHL Headings

CINAHL Headings - see if there are any relevant search terms for you to use.

The CINAHL Headings list (controlled vocabulary or thesaurus) includes 16,000+ terms. In many cases, the most efficient way to search CINAHL is to use these headings that have been assigned to related articles by the CINAHL indexers. Not all concepts have a CINAHL heading assigned to them. You will see these called Subjects, Subject: Major Heading, Major Subjects, and Minor Subjects in the results and narrowing features.

A definition from Ebsco: These Headings follow the structure of the Medical Subject Headings, or MeSH, used in PubMed by the National Library of Medicine. This structure has been used to develop the CINAHL subject headings which reflect the terminology used by nursing and allied health professionals.

For more information see:

• Using the CINAHL/MeSH Headings Feature. (Old Interface) This 3 minute and 33 seconds flash video tutorial, from the Ebsco company that owns CINAHL. This is a useful illustration of how to search for CINAHL Headings. The Search History feature advice is good too.
• CINAHL Subject Headings (Old Interface) page from the UW Health Sciences Library.

Steps to search:

Step 1: Please Note: Searching with CINAHL Subject Headings will remove any limits you have placed on your search, and you can reapply them after you search.

Step 2: Click on the "CINAHL Headings" option below the search boxes, as illustrated below.

Step 3: Type your a search word or concept into the search box and click on search, as illustrated below:

Step 4:  (Optional) Click the the word medication errors to open the information page. 

Step 5:  The information page includes a Scope note (brief definition), select option, Used for, Related headings, tree view (index):

Use the Back option to go back to the CINAHL Headings list.

Step 6: Select the desired subject heading by clicking the box next to it. This will also display the subheadings associated with the subject heading. 

Note: the options to make the subject heading a Major Concept in the article, or to Explode results so that all narrower subject headings are searched as well.

Step 7: Click on the Add to Search button to add it to the search boxes at the top of the page.

Step 8: To search for additional subject headings, type new words into the CINAHL Headings search box above the headings results. You can then click in the box to the left to select the heading, and then click on Add to Search button to add it to the search boxes at the top of the page.

Step 9: Click on the Search button to search. MH stands for Major Heading, which will make it a relevant search. 

Consider if you want to combine the words you have selected with "and" or "or". Searching with "and" will provide more specific results. Searching with "or" will provide you with more results, but will provide results with articles that may contain only one of the CINAHL Headings you selected. More information about searching with "and" or "or" in CINAHL is located online at the Brainstorming a Search page.