SURG 1100 - Preclinical Perioperative Case Project Guide: Search Tips

Whether searching for books or articles, make your searching easier by using these tips!

Topic - Your case study scenario will be assigned to you in class. 

Example: Heart transplantation case study, including descriptions of the following:

• Patient
• Pathology
• Perioperative phase (role of surgical technician, drugs, equipment, anesthesia, catheter, positioning, surgical site preparation, drapes, hazards).
• Interoperative phase (detailed surgical procedure).
• Postoperative phase (patient recovery, postoperative complications, prognosis and outcomes, surgical technician duties).

Keywords—Keywords are one way to create search strategies to locate relevant information on your topic. Keywords are the most significant words and phrases associated with your topic. Use your favorite AI tool to help brainstorm keywords (e.g. ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity). 

Example AI query: Please help me brainstorm keywords to search for information on heart surgery.

Example keywords: heart transplantation, heart surgery, cardiac surgery;

anatomy, physiology, organs, tissues, vascular system, lymphatic system, innervation, nerves, pathology, specimens, supplies, drugs, pharmaceuticals, equipment, anesthesia, positioning, surgical site preparation, drapes, hazards, safety, surgical procedure, drains, surgical dressing, intraoperative complications, postoperative complications, prognosis.

Quotation Marks/Phrase Searching—Use quotation marks to search for a specific phrase.

            Example: “heart transplantation”    

Boolean Operators: AND, OR, NOT

And—narrows a search by inclusion.

Example: "heart transplantation" AND equipment retrieves only sources that include both search terms, which limits the number of results.  

Or—expands a search.

Example: equipment OR supplies will retrieve sources containing either term, expanding your pool of resources.    

Not—narrows a search by exclusion.

Example: surgery NOT endoscopy retrieves only sources that contain the first keyword, eliminating sources for keywords that follow not.

Truncation—Using an asterisk*, increases the number of results you’ll retrieve by searching for variant endings of a word root.

            Example: surg* retrieves surgery, surgeries, surgical, surgeon etc..