Nursing Research Guide:Is it Written by a Nurse?

A research guide for students in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences

Is it Written by a Nurse?

In some cases you'll be asked to find research written by a nurse or where a nurse is an author on a study.

There are two ways to tell if you're looking at a work published by a nurse:

1) you can always google the authors of a study. If you're working in a database that doesn't allow you to filter by whether there is a nurse as an author, just copy and paste their name into Google. Usually the author will appear in the results alongside their credentials. If they are a nurse, a nurse researcher, or a nursing professor, you're in the clear!

2) the other way to find works written by nursing professionals is to use a database that includes a filter for nursing authors. CINAHL is one such database. Follow the instructions below to ensure the articles you look at have a nurse as an author.

Nurse Authors in CINAHL Complete

CINAHL Complete is a database build for nurses and other health professionals. As such, it includes filters that are of unique interest to nursing researchers. Follow these instructions to limit your search results to only those with a nurse as an author.

When you enter CINAHL (see link above to jump into the database), you'll see three text boxes where you can enter keywords relevant to your topic. Below those three boxes is a long list of different filters you can apply to your search results before you even have to hit "search."

Scroll down until you see the boxes that say "Any Author is Nurse" and "First Author is Nurse," like this:

You can check whichever box is right for you. If you just need to know that a nurse was on the team who wrote the article, check the "Any Author is Nurse" box. If, however, you're only interested in an article where a nurse was the lead on a study and article, check the box under "First Author is Nurse."

Then, you can scroll back up, enter keywords that you're interested in learning about, and hit the green "search" button to view your results. After you've checked those boxes, your results should only include articles that have a nurse as an author or a nurse as a first author.