How to search PubMed for a nursing thesis

Published: 09.11.2026 About 8 minutes to read

A student reviews printed papers in a library, with a laptop, notebook and navy scrub top on the table. — Reviewing literature for a nursing thesis.

Your supervisor asks for a few studies for a chapter on teaching patients before they leave hospital. You paste your whole thesis topic into PubMed and get papers on treatment when you need evidence about nursing care. Start by deciding which patients you are looking for and what happened as part of their care. Those two details give you something to search for.

Try this first. Write down “heart failure” and “discharge education”. Enter heart failure AND discharge education in PubMed. Open a few promising results and see how the authors describe the education they provided. Use those words in your next search.

What do you need to find for your nursing thesis?

Take a student who wants to know whether extra advice and teaching before discharge helps patients with heart failure stay out of hospital. A topic such as “Patient education in heart failure” leaves a lot open. Is this about a conversation on the ward, a follow-up appointment or a programme lasting several months? This is where PICO helps. It gives you four questions to turn a chapter topic into something you can look for in the research.

P – who is the thesis about? Adults with heart failure who go home after a hospital stay.
I – what happened as part of their care? A nurse provides extra teaching before discharge.
C – what are you comparing it with? Usual discharge care. Check what that meant in each study. Those patients might also have received advice, in a different form or with less detail.
O – what outcome are you interested in? A return to hospital within 30 days of discharge. In this example, that means readmission for any reason. Readmission for heart failure alone is a different outcome.

You now have a question for the chapter. Is extra teaching from a nurse before discharge, compared with usual discharge care, linked to a smaller share of patients returning to hospital within 30 days? If your supervisor asks you to describe what patients experience at home, look for words that capture those experiences. This use of PICO works best when you want to know the effect of an intervention. The Medical University of Lodz has materials in Polish that explain both approaches.

How can you find more studies when authors use different words?

One paper calls it discharge education, another discharge teaching. Searching for just the first expression may miss the second. In PubMed, OR means that either expression will do. AND means that both topics need to be present. Here you want each result to cover both heart failure and patient education. If you know a term in Polish, the Tez-MeSH thesaurus described by the Medical University of Warsaw Library can also help you look it up.

PubMed assigns subject headings called MeSH to some articles. The words authors use in their titles and abstracts are useful too, especially for articles that have not yet been given a heading. In the example below, [mh] looks for a MeSH heading and [tiab] searches fields including the title, abstract and author keywords.

An example you can paste into PubMed

("Heart Failure"[mh] OR "heart failure"[tiab]) AND ("Patient Education as Topic"[mh] OR "patient education"[tiab] OR "discharge education"[tiab] OR "discharge teaching"[tiab])

The first set of brackets covers heart failure and the second covers education. Start with those two topics. Look in the abstract or full paper to see who provided the teaching, what usual care involved and how long the researchers followed patients. Including “30 days” from the start can hide studies that only mention the follow-up period in their results.

What should you do with your PubMed results?

Open a few results and read the abstracts. Look for whether the patients were about to leave hospital and who did the teaching. If the results surprise you, go to Advanced and expand the details under History and Search Details. PubMed shows how it read the terms you entered. Also check the side panel for filters left over from an earlier search.

One paper you can use to check your search

Enter 15642765 in PubMed. It opens a study by Koelling and colleagues about education before discharge for people with heart failure. The title contains both ideas you are looking for. Run the earlier search and see if it includes this paper. To test that one result precisely, open the search details, put the earlier search in brackets and add AND 15642765[pmid]. Use the version without the number when you go back to looking for studies.

This paper makes a good search check because it really is about teaching before discharge. The main outcome in its abstract is the total number of days spent in hospital or lost to death over 180 days of follow-up. The student wants readmission within 30 days. She needs to check the full text to see whether that particular result is reported separately. The paper may still help her introduce the topic of patient education.

Too many or too few studies? Change one thing

If most results are about outpatient visits, try adding a term for discharge. If you use the example on this page, add AND ("Patient Discharge"[mh] OR discharge[tiab]) at the end. Compare the first results before and after. If a paper you already know and want to consider disappears, look at how the authors described when the teaching happened. They may have mentioned discharge only in the full paper.

If you find very little, run separate searches on heart failure and patient education. Look for other ways of describing each topic in relevant abstracts. Check your university library before restricting the results to free full texts. You can also consult the Polish Medical Bibliography, especially if you need Polish publications on care and how discharge is organised. For more ways to get papers, see our guide to finding literature for a bachelor’s or master’s thesis.

How do you write up the search in a master’s thesis?

Before you close PubMed, record the date, the database, the full search exactly as you entered it, any filters and the number of results. Keep track of the full texts you were able to read. If you leave a study out, make a brief note of the reason. Perhaps the teaching happened after discharge or the study involved different patients. A week later, you will still know why each paper is in your notes.

A sample paragraph for the methods section

“On [date], PubMed was searched for studies on education before discharge for patients with heart failure. The full search and any filters were recorded in [location]. Of the [number] results, papers relevant to [scope] were selected for full-text reading.” Keep only the steps you actually carried out.

If you cannot get the full text, record that it was unavailable and check the library later. If two papers describe the same patients, note that they may be reports from one study. If your supervisor requires a systematic review, agree on the databases, selection rules and how to assess study quality in advance. Our guide to writing a literature review shows how to bring findings from several publications together in one part of the chapter. You can find more about support in this subject on the Nursing page.

What should you check before sending the chapter to your supervisor?

Is it clear which patients and which stage of care you mean?
Did you record the full search, date, filters and number of results?
Do the studies you use to answer the question report the outcome and follow-up period you need?
Can the reader see which full texts you read and why you left some papers out?

Common questions about literature for a thesis

Where can I find free literature for a bachelor's thesis?

Start with Biblioteka Nauki, BazHum, a relevant subject database, and repositories. Availability depends on the publication. Also check resources available through your library. Focus on the usefulness of the text, not just whether you can download it for free.

Is the list of found sources a ready-made literature review?

No. The list indicates publications and their potential usefulness. A literature review requires reading the materials, comparing findings, and developing a coherent synthesis. A systematic review additionally requires a defined search and study eligibility method. I agree on such tasks separately.

Can you source and provide literature for a specific subsection?

Yes. I can prepare and provide the necessary literature and bibliography for a specified subsection or all chapters of the thesis. Send the topic, plan, title of the selected part, and a description of the issues. You can include a draft fragment and sources you already have. Before starting, I will agree on the scope of materials, their availability, and the method of delivery.

References

Medical University of Lodz. Formułowanie pytania badawczego. Training material in Polish on PICO and qualitative questions. systematicreview.umed.pl/1-formulowanie-pytania-badawczego/.
Medical University of Warsaw Library. Medyczne bazy danych. Guide in Polish to the Polish Medical Bibliography and Tez-MeSH thesaurus. biblioteka.wum.edu.pl/zasoby/medyczne-bazy-danych/bazy.
Medical University of Gdańsk. Naukowe bazy danych. A Polish guide to searching, search operators and access to research. poradnik-naukowy.gumed.edu.pl/42019.html.
Cochrane Poland. Jak interpretować przeglądy systematyczne? An explanation in Polish of PICO, study selection and appraisal. poland.cochrane.org/pl/jak-interpretowac-przeglady-systematyczne.
National Library of Medicine. PubMed User Guide. Documentation on search fields, MeSH and search history. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/help/.
National Library of Medicine. MeSH Descriptor Data 2026. Heart Failure (D006333), Patient Education as Topic (D010353), Patient Discharge (D010351).
Lefebvre, C., Glanville, J., Briscoe, S., Featherstone, R., Littlewood, A., Metzendorf, M.-I., Noel-Storr, A., Paynter, R., Rader, T., Thomas, J., & Wieland, L. S. (2025). Searching for and selecting studies. Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions, chapter 4, version 6.5.1.
Koelling, T. M., Johnson, M. L., Cody, R. J., & Aaronson, K. D. (2005). Discharge education improves clinical outcomes in patients with chronic heart failure. Circulation, 111(2), 179-185. DOI 10.1161/01.CIR.0000151811.53450.B8. PMID 15642765.

Need help finding literature for a nursing thesis?

If you are studying in Poland, tell us whether you are preparing a bachelor’s or master’s thesis or working on a particular chapter. Send the topic and your supervisor’s comments. We can work out whether you need help choosing sources or polishing how you describe the search and use the literature.

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