Advanced Breast Practice and Professional Practice in Mammography

Before you start searching the literature plan the steps you need to take. Think about: 

How to find information on your topic

• Use Hunter to search for general information or to look at the background of a topic. 
• To find up-to-date journal articles, use Hunter or select a specialist health database relevant to your subject area. 

What are the limits of your search?

• Think about the parameters of your search, such as date, language or geographical scope. Several databases include features and filters that allows you to refine your search results. 

Are there research models you can use? 

• There are different models that can help you formulate a research topic. PICO is a common model.

It is important that you plan your search in a methodical way to find the most relevant sources of information. If you can, turn your search topic into a research question. This will help you to formulate a specific and targeted search. For example, the topic 'thrombolytic therapy and heart attack' is quite vague. Instead, it could be phrased as:

From here, you can identify the key concepts in your search and come up with some alternative terms and keywords to search. Use the example table below as a guide. You might want to create your own table in a word document or on a piece of paper.

Write out your essay topic as a question. Identify the important concepts and list any alternative terms underneath:

As well as using keywords, you can also search for your concepts as subject terms. See the EBSCO video playlist for more detail.