The Topic Search Strategy

5. The Topic Search Strategy paper is the first of three related assignments. The purpose of this initial paper is to briefly describe your search strategies when identifying two articles that pertain to an evidence-based practice topic of interest.

Course outcomes: This assignment enables the student to meet the following course outcomes.

CO 1: Examine the sources of knowledge that contribute to professional nursing practice. (PO 7)

CO 2: Apply research principles to the interpretation of the content of published research studies. (POs 4 and 8)

This section will outline the steps you need to follow to successfully conduct a search with databases and other sources. Every search begins with a topic or question. I usually begin by forming an inquiry question. I begin the process by determining the subject I’d like to dig into. It is crucial to note that the less data you find published in databases or on the internet or in a database, the more specific the topic and your search question will be (Frandsen and others. 2020). It is recommended to begin by performing general searches to see what’s been written about a particular patient’s demographic, treatment or therapy, as well as a drug. The research question I choose to ask will be constructed by using PICO. With PICO you can develop a researchable topic that is based on a situation you’ve seen (Eriksen and Frandsen in 2018). You can select specific keywords or topical phrases to use for database searches based on the information you have gathered from your PICO query. Your research question may be developed using PICO. Cont…