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NURS 5910 (MSN) & 7910 (DNP): Advanced Nursing Research & Evidence-Based Practice: Clinical Practice Guidelines

This library guide is designed for students in the NURS 5910 (MSN) & 7910 (DNP) Advanced Nursing Research & EBP course.

Finding Guidelines in Journals

Guidelines are often published as articles in peer-reviewed journals. These article publications are sometimes simply called guidelines, or more specifically - practice guidelines, clinical practice guidelines, recommendations, or consensus statements.

To locate guideline articles published in professional, health sciences journals, the best place to start is a research database. 

See below for step-by-step instructions for locating guidelines in CINAHL, PubMed, and ClinicalKey. 

CINAHL: Finding Guidelines

To narrow your CINAHL search results to guideline articles, follow these steps: 

  • Access CINAHL by clicking here 
  • Conduct your search using relevant keywords, i.e.: 
  • After retrieving a list of results, click the Show More link on the left side of the results page under Limit To: 
  • From the window that opens up on your screen, navigate to the Publication Type menu, select Practice Guidelines, and click the yellow Search button located at the top or bottom of the window: 

PubMed@UT: Finding Guidelines

To narrow your PubMed search results to guideline articles, follow these steps:

  • Access PubMed via the PubMed@UT link to see all filters/limiting options
  • Conduct your search using relevant keywords, i.e.: 
  • After retrieving a list of results, click the Guideline filter on the left side of the search results screen:

ClinicalKey: Finding Guidelines

ClinicalKey is a multi-format database that includes clinical information from a variety of sources, including books and journals. 

To locate practice guidelines in ClinicalKey follow the steps in the two options below: 

Option 1: Next to the search box in the middle of the page, choose Guidelines from the drop-down menu. Type your search terms in the box, and click Search

Option 2: Browse all guidelines by clicking the Guidelines box on the main ClinicalKey page 

General Resources on the Web for Finding Guidelines

The following are good starting points for finding practice guidelines in a variety of areas.