Identifying nurse staffing research in Medline: development and testing of empirically derived search strategies with the PubMed interface.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The identification of health services research in databases such as PubMed/Medline is a cumbersome task. This task becomes even more difficult if the field of interest involves the use of diverse methods and data sources, as is the case with nurse staffing research. This type of research investigates the association between nurse staffing parameters and nursing and patient outcomes. A comprehensively developed search strategy may help identify nurse staffing research in PubMed/Medline.

Methods

A set of relevant references in PubMed/Medline was identified by means of three systematic reviews. This development set was used to detect candidate free-text and MeSH terms. The frequency of these terms was compared to a random sample from PubMed/Medline in order to identi

SUBMITTER: Simon M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2936389 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature