Pro Tips
OVID (Medline, EMBASE, PsycINFO...): * or $ used for unlimited right-hand truncation, i.e. gene$ or gene* stands for gene, genes, genetics...; # stands for one character within a word, i.e. wom#n finds women or woman; ? stands for zero or one characters within a word, i.e. colo?r finds color or colour.
EBSCOhost (CINAHL, SPORTDiscus): * used for unlimited right-hand truncation, i.e. gene* stands for gene, genes, genetics...; # stands for one character within a word, i.e. wom#n finds women or woman. More detailed information found on this page
All databases: use quotation marks ("word phrase") to find specific phrase, i.e. "university student" will that exact phrase, will ignore all articles where university is in one part of the record and student is in another part of the record.
Used to force a database to search the contents with in the parentheses first and before combining the whole search string, i.e. (arm OR wrist OR elbow) AND (splint OR immobilization) would first search arm or wrist or elbow to create one group, then splint or immobilization before combining those two sets together. As a rule of thumb only use the OR operator within parentheses.