Systematic literature searching for health and life sciences students

Searching effectively in the health databases (online session) 

Struggling to find the right information for your assignments? Need to show evidence of your search strategy? Not sure how to structure a search—or even where to begin? Or do you just need to get familiar with the new CINAHL/Medline searching interface? 

This interactive workshop is designed to help you feel confident using health databases like CINAHL. We’ll guide you through the full process—from planning your search to saving and re-running it—so you can approach your research with clarity and confidence.

Who is it for?

Students on health-related courses who:

• Are new to structured searching
• Have tried it before but found it confusing
• Want a refresher to strengthen their skills
• Can’t find what they need using the new searching interface

What will you learn?

We’ll show you how to:

• Break down your topic and identify keywords
• Plan a search strategy using a framework like PICO, PIO, or PEO
• Use Boolean operators and truncation
• Apply filters to refine your results
• Save and re-run your searches using a personal account

Whether you're preparing for a literature/systematic review or just want to improve your research skills, this session will give you practical techniques you can use straight away.

Upcoming sessions:

You do not have to book onto the workshop as attendance is on a first come first served basis

• The next workshop is due to run online (via Teams) on Thursday 30th October 2025, 12:00-13:00 : Link to join

Due to the recent changes to the searching interface for CINAHL and Medline, a recording is not currently available. However the Systematic literature searching for health and life sciences students guide includes lots of videos and written guidance which cover the whole searching process. The slides which will be used in the workshop are also available below. 

If you need further information or any adjustments to fully access our sessions, please contact libraryhelp@tees.ac.uk in advance. 

We are very interested to hear your views about any workshop you attend.

Please complete the feedback form after you have attended.

Click on the calendar image or on the link below to see the programme of other webinars currently being offered: http://libguides.tees.ac.uk/workshop

Further reading

Research referred to in this guide, as well as additional useful resources, can be found on the reading list for Searching for Information in Health and Life Sciences. Click on the image below to access the reading list.

This work is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Deed.