The Comprehensive Case Study Assignment includes two parts: a written assignment and documentation in DocuCare, the Electronic Health Record used for this course. This guide focuses on sources that will help you generate keywords and gather background research and resources for the written assignment.
The first step in the research process is generating keywords, so you know what to look for in library databases, the library catalog, or an online search engine. You may be looking in exactly the right place, but without the right keywords, you might never find the right source.
The first step is to look at your chosen case. Here's an example case (please note, this is not one of the four options for your actual assignment):
"69 y/o Caucasian female from Oregon with Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS)"
Most of your searches will use keywords related to this diagnosis, this patient, or pathophysiology.
The most obvious keywords have already been given to you. In your example, you have several different concepts:
Topic of this project: pathophysiology
Age of the patient: 69 y/o
Population or demographic indicators: Caucasian female from Oregon
Diagnosis: Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS)
These are all good options for possible search keywords.
Some keywords will find many search results, but you may have to change some of them to locate the best results. For example, let's compare two elements of your theoretical patient: 69 y/o and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Can you guess which one will find more and better resources? Why is that?
There is probably at least one synonym for most of your keywords. Try some of these:
| Your keywords are: | pathophysiology | 69 y/o | Caucasian | female | Oregon | Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) |
| How else could you express this concept? |
physiopathology disease effects blood tests sample values vital signs |
elderly geriatric age 60-70 (or whatever age range the source uses) |
White a particular country of origin (e.g., Irish, Italian, French) |
woman women |
Portland Pacific Northwest United States |
No other options. This is pretty much the only name for this condition. That's okay -- not all your keywords will have synonyms. For other medical diagnoses, you might want to consider looking for a scientific name vs. a common name, an abbreviation vs. the full name, or an alternate spelling or term that's used in one country but not another. |
Great! Now you have several more options for search terms.
Some databases, including CINAHL and OneSearch, give you the option to use truncation, which means replacing part of your search term with an asterisk. For example, searching for pathophysiology would only find pathophysiology, but searching for pathophysio* would find pathophysiology, pathophysiologic, and pathophysiological. That can save time because you'll be able to do one search instead of three.
Choose the right place to truncate your search term. pathophysio* works because there are only a few words that start with "pathophysio" and they all have slightly different endings. On the other hand, pat* wouldn't be the best choice -- can you see why?
Which of your keywords could you truncate?
| Your keywords are: |
pathophysiology physiopathology disease effects blood tests sample values vital signs |
69 y/o elderly geriatric age 60-70 (or whatever age range the source uses) |
Caucasian White a particular country of origin (e.g., Irish, Italian, French) |
female woman women |
Oregon Portland Pacific Northwest United States |
Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) |
| Can these be truncated? |
pathophysio* physiopatho* |
elder* geriatric* |
It probably wouldn't help to truncate "Caucasian" or "White." However, if you did have a country of origin for your patient, you could try something like Ital* to find Italy and Italian. |
Nothing helpful here |
Nothing helpful here |
Nothing helpful here |
So now you can add the four truncated options to your search.
You now have many, many options for your search. Your last step is to string them together to come up with a search strategy. Here's what we came up with in the first three steps:
| Your keywords are: |
pathophysio* physiopatho* disease effects blood tests sample values vital signs |
69 y/o elder* geriatric* age 60-70 (or whatever age range the source uses) |
Caucasian white a particular country of origin (e.g., Irish, Italian, French) |
female woman women |
Oregon Portland Pacific Northwest United States |
Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) |
That's a lot of keywords. Don't put them all in one search! Yes, you can try looking for pathophysio* age 60-70 white women Pacific Northwest Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), but that's a very specific search and you might not be able to find any sources that discuss all of those things. Instead, consider stringing together two or three at a time from different columns:
pathophysio* Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
vital signs elderly women AIDS
disease effects women United States AIDS
physiopatho* Caucasian Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
Give yourself time to try several different combinations until you find the best ones. On the next page, you'll see some recommendations for places to search using your keywords.
We have other guides and tutorials on building a search strategy. For more resources and suggestions, try these:
