| Course | NR 516 Basic Research and Evidence-based Practice |
|---|---|
| Week | 2 |
| Paper type | Search strategy exercise |
| Length | About 1,100 words, 3 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Chamberlain University |
| Program | MSN |
| Updated | September 2026 |
Free sample paper for NR 516 Week 2
Searchable Question Exercise: From "Why Do We Flush Every Eight Hours?" to a PubMed String That Returns Twenty-Three Records Worth Reading
Student Name
College of Nursing, Chamberlain University
NR 516: Basic Research and Evidence-based Practice
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Searchable Question Exercise: From "Why Do We Flush Every Eight Hours?" to a PubMed String That Returns Twenty-Three Records Worth Reading
The Practice Interest in the Unit's Words
The question began as a sentence at the nurses' station: why does every unused IV on this unit get a flush three times a day? On my medical-surgical unit, a 10 mL saline flush is scheduled at 0600, 1400 and 2200 for each peripheral line with no infusion attached. The sentence is a good question for a staff meeting and a poor one for a database. A database does not know what "idle IV" or "q8 flush" means, and it will not guess. This exercise records how the interest became something a search box can match, and where the searching stopped.
Step 1: Naming the Parts
I broke the interest into the four elements of a practice question:
Population: adult inpatients on medical or surgical units with a peripheral intravenous catheter not in continuous use.
Intervention: flushing with saline less often than every eight hours, for example once a day.
Comparison: flushing every eight hours, or more often.
Outcome: catheter failure, meaning the catheter must be removed before therapy is finished because it blocks, leaks into the tissue, falls out or causes phlebitis.
Written as a question: in adult medical-surgical inpatients with an idle peripheral intravenous catheter, does flushing with saline once every 24 hours, compared with every 8 hours or more often, change the rate of catheter failure?
The outcome needed the most work. My unit talks about lines that "go bad." The research language turned out to be "catheter failure" or "patency," with failure usually defined as a combination of occlusion, infiltration, dislodgement and phlebitis.
Step 2: Finding the Database's Words
PubMed indexes articles with Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). Searching the MeSH database for "peripheral catheter" led to the heading Catheterization, Peripheral, which covers peripheral venous and arterial catheters. There is no subject heading for flushing, so that concept had to be searched as a free-text word in titles and abstracts, with a truncation symbol, flush*, to catch flush, flushes and flushing. "Saline lock," a phrase my unit uses, turned out to be uncommon in the literature. Interval words were also free text: frequency, interval, hourly and "once daily."
Step 3: The Search Record
All searches were run in PubMed on September 30, 2026. Table 1 shows each string and its count.
Table 1
PubMed Search Record for the Flushing Question
| # | Search string | Records |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | flush*[tiab] AND peripheral[tiab] AND catheter*[tiab] | 210 |
| 2 | "Catheterization, Peripheral"[MeSH] AND flush*[tiab] | 217 |
| 3 | #2 AND (frequency[tiab] OR interval[tiab] OR hourly[tiab] OR "once daily"[tiab]) | 39 |
| 4 | #3 AND (occlusion[tiab] OR failure[tiab] OR patency[tiab]) | 23 |
| 5 | #3 limited to the publication type randomized controlled trial (with "once daily" removed) | 11 |
| 6 | "saline lock" (the unit's own phrase) | 33 |
Note. Counts are as returned on the search date and will change as records are added.
Step 4: Reading the Counts
Search 1, using only free-text words, returned 210 records; search 2, anchored on the subject heading, returned 217. The two sets overlapped heavily but not completely, which is a reminder that the heading and the words catch slightly different articles. Adding the interval words in search 3 cut the count to 39, and adding the outcome words in search 4 brought it to 23. Twenty-three abstracts can be read in an evening, so that is where the search stopped.
Search 5, limited to randomized trials, returned 11 records. Reading their titles showed why a design limit is a blunt tool: just three compared peripheral flush intervals, a single adult study and a pair in children (Keogh et al., 2016; Kleidon et al., 2020; Schreiber et al., 2015). The others concerned arterial lines, central catheters, heparin or insertion technique. A design limit narrows by study type, not by relevance, so it does not replace reading.
Search 6 showed that the unit's phrase, "saline lock," would have found a different and smaller set, many about locking with heparin. Had I started with the unit's words, I would have missed most of the trials.
Step 5: Checking the Strings Against a Known Article
Before trusting the search, I tested it against an article I already knew should be found. The adult pilot trial by Keogh et al. (2016) was located first through the plain-phrase search in Week 1. I checked that it appeared in searches 2, 3, 4 and 5, and it did. It did not appear in search 6, because its abstract does not use the phrase "saline lock." That single check did two things. It confirmed that the subject heading and the free-text words were capturing the right kind of study, and it showed concretely why the unit's vocabulary was the wrong starting point. A search that cannot find an article you already know is relevant cannot be trusted to find the ones you do not know. The check takes five minutes and is worth doing for every string that will be reported in a paper, because a grader or a colleague who repeats the search should be able to find the same core articles.
What the Search Settled and What It Did Not
The search settled that the question can be searched as written and that a small number of trials address it. It did not settle the answer, and it raised a problem with the question itself: none of the three trials compared eight hours with anything. The adult trial compared 6-hour with 24-hour flushing, and so did one pediatric trial; the other compared 12 hours with 24 hours. The question may need to be rewritten as "less often than our current practice" rather than naming eight hours, or the answer will have to be drawn from trials that bracket our interval.
The search also has limits. I searched one database. CINAHL, which indexes more nursing journals, is the next step, and it uses its own subject headings, so the strings above will need to be translated rather than copied. A search of trial registries could show whether a larger adult trial is under way.
Each count in the table is dated because the database grows every week; a reader repeating the search next year should expect slightly higher numbers and the same core trials near the top of the list.
References
Keogh, S., Flynn, J., Marsh, N., Mihala, G., Davies, K., & Rickard, C. (2016). Varied flushing frequency and volume to prevent peripheral intravenous catheter failure: A pilot, factorial randomised controlled trial in adult medical-surgical hospital patients. Trials, 17(1), Article 348. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-016-1470-6
Kleidon, T. M., Keogh, S., Flynn, J., Schults, J., Mihala, G., & Rickard, C. M. (2020). Flushing of peripheral intravenous catheters: A pilot, factorial, randomised controlled trial of high versus low frequency and volume in paediatrics. Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, 56(1), 22-29. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpc.14482
Schreiber, S., Zanchi, C., Ronfani, L., Delise, A., Corbelli, A., Bortoluzzi, R., Taddio, A., & Barbi, E. (2015). Normal saline flushes performed once daily maintain peripheral intravenous catheter patency: A randomised controlled trial. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 100(7), 700-703. https://doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2014-307478
Reading the NR 516 Week 2 instructions
The Week 2 assignment asks you to write a searchable clinical question and build a search strategy for it. Prompts usually ask for the question in PICO or PICOT form, the key terms and synonyms, subject headings in a database such as CINAHL or PubMed, Boolean operators, limits, and a record of results. Some sections ask you to reflect on how the search changed as you refined it. The aim is a search another person could repeat and get the same core results. Record the database and date for every search. Check whether your section requires a particular database, a table format for the search record or a minimum number of results to review.
How this NR 516 Week 2 example is built
The example begins with the question in the unit's own words and explains why a database cannot use them. It builds each PICO element, noting that the outcome needed the most translation, from lines that go bad to catheter failure. It explains the subject heading, the truncation and the interval words. Table 1 records six searches and their counts. The reading section explains each narrowing step and why a randomized-trial limit cut by design rather than relevance. A validation step checks that a known trial appears in each search, and it did except under the unit's phrase. The final section says the question may need rewording, since no trial tested eight hours.
NR 516 Week 2 rubric: what full points look like
The rubric for the searchable question exercise usually rewards a well-formed question, appropriate search terms and subject headings, correct use of Boolean logic and limits, and a clear record of the search. Graders look for synonyms and truncation that widen the search sensibly and for limits that narrow it without losing the relevant studies. A reflection criterion rewards explaining why each change was made. Some rubrics give points for identifying relevant articles from the results. APA 7 formatting of the question, table and references completes the grade. A search record that another nurse could repeat is the clearest sign of quality, and graders often try a string themselves.
NR 516 Week 2 help from the desk
The biggest mistake is searching with the unit's vocabulary and stopping when the results look thin. Find the database's own terms first. Another common problem is using too many limits at once, which can remove the very studies you need; add limits one at a time and watch the counts. Students also forget to record the date and database, making the search impossible to repeat. Do not treat a design limit as a relevance filter; read the titles. If your question names an interval or dose that no study tested, say so and consider rewording. Finally, test your strings against one article you know is relevant. A search that cannot find it needs fixing.
Get a NR 516 Week 2 example written to your instructions
Send the Week 2 worksheet or prompt your classroom uses, with the practice interest you want searched, and a completed example comes back on your template: rows, strings, counts and limiters filled in. Written to your instructions, returned inside 24-48h, and the first one costs nothing.
More NR 516 papers and MSN samples
- NR 516 Week 1: Discussion Post on a Ward Habit
- NR 516 Week 3: Article Summary
- NR 516 Week 4: Design Identification Exercise
- NR 516 Week 5: Research Ethics Case
- NR 516 Week 6: Qualitative Study Review
- NR 516 Week 7: Evidence Table
- NR 516 Week 8: Practice Question Paper
- NR 513 Week 2: Standards Analysis, Phase I Staffing
- NR 510F Week 2: Competency Self-assessment
- NR 510 Week 2: Role Description Analysis
- NR 508 Week 2: Pharmacokinetics Write-up
NR 516 Week 2 questions, answered
How many synonyms belong in a row?
Enough that the row stops changing the count. Most rows settle at three or four: the clinical word, the everyday word, the abbreviation, and whatever heading the database prefers. Adding a fifth that returns nothing new is harmless but earns nothing, while leaving out the obvious everyday word is what usually costs, since a good deal of nursing writing never uses the clinical term at all.
Do I have to use subject headings, or are keywords enough?
Many classrooms want both, and the sheet should show which is which. Headings find papers that never use your wording; plain words find recent papers the indexers have not caught up with yet. Running the two separately and reporting both counts is more convincing than one combined string, and it takes about a minute longer to do.
What if the final search returns two results?
Report the two, then loosen something specific and say which thing you loosened. Dropping the date limiter, moving from a narrow heading to a broader one, or removing the comparison element usually reopens the set. The exercise is generally marked on whether the moves are visible, not on whether the last number is a comfortable size.
Where can I find a free NR 516 Week 2 sample paper?
The flushing search exercise shown here is the whole NR 516 Week 2 paper, dated counts and all, and reading it costs nothing. Send your own practice interest through the form for a matching search record.
Do I need subject headings for the NR 516 search exercise?
Most sections expect them, because they gather articles on a topic regardless of wording. The sample combines one PubMed subject heading with free-text words for concepts, such as flushing, that have no heading of their own.