Three databases, two supplementary routes and one refused shortcut are logged with dates, strings, filters and counts in MN600's Unit 3 search log, auditable from end to end. Searches like "mn 600 unit 3 assignment example", "mn600 unit 3 sample" and "mn600 unit 3 example" land here.
Database Search Log: Peanut Ball Positioning and Cesarean Birth in Nulliparous Patients With Epidurals
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
MN600: Evidence-Based Practice Project
Unit 3 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Counts are illustrative figures for a model document and will differ on any real run.
Header
Question (from Unit 2), in brief: NTSV patients with epidural analgesia; peanut ball positioning; side-lying with pillows; cesarean birth; during the current labor. Sources, platforms and dates: CINAHL Complete (EBSCOhost interface), PubMed (NLM web interface) and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) through the Cochrane Library, all searched October 6, 2026. Filters are applied one per line so their separate effects stay visible (Lefebvre et al., 2023).
CINAHL Complete (EBSCOhost)
Line 1. (MH "Parity") OR nulliparous OR primiparous OR "first birth". Count: 11,420. Line 2. (MH "Analgesia, Epidural") OR epidural*. Count: 16,905. Line 3. "peanut ball*" OR "peanut-shaped ball*" OR "peanut exercise ball*". Count: 34. Line 4. peanut OR "birth ball*". Count: 96. Decision: rejected as too broad; it retrieved 41 papers about upright sitting birth balls in early labor. Line 5. Line 2 AND Line 3. Count: 27. Line 6. Line 5, limit 2010 to 2026. Count: 26. Line 7. Line 6, limit English. Count: 23. Line 8. Line 7, limit peer reviewed. Count: 21.
Line 4 is kept in the log as an instructive failure: adding NOT "birth ball" would have silently discarded any trial comparing the two devices, so the phrase was narrowed instead and the remaining sitting-ball papers were left to screening, where each is counted as wrong intervention. The population block (Line 1) was not combined with the intervention, because most peanut ball studies do not index parity and adding it cut the set by half in a test run; population is applied at screening instead.
PubMed
Line 1. "peanut ball"[tiab] OR "peanut-shaped ball"[tiab] OR "peanut exercise ball"[tiab]. Count: 36. Line 2. "Analgesia, Epidural"[Mesh] OR epidural[tiab]. Count: 29,480. Line 3. Line 1 AND Line 2. Count: 25. Line 4. Line 3, filter 2010 to 2026. Count: 25. Line 5. Line 4, filter English. Count: 24.
CENTRAL
Search: peanut ball in title, abstract or keywords. Count: 19 records, most of them trial registrations.
Other Routes
Backward citation chasing from the most recent systematic review of randomized trials (Grenvik et al., 2019) found 2 additional reports not retrieved by the databases. A hand search of the AWHONN convention abstracts published in the journal's annual supplement, 2016 to 2025, found 6 relevant abstracts, most of them quality improvement reports.
Filter Effects
The English limit removed 3 records in CINAHL, one of them a trial published in Turkish with an English abstract. That trial is flagged for full-text retrieval and translation rather than allowed to disappear. The peer-review limit removed 2 records, both nursing magazine articles.
Screening and PRISMA Flow
Records identified: CINAHL 21, PubMed 24, CENTRAL 19, citation chasing 2, hand search 6; total 72. Duplicates removed: 28. Records screened: 44. Excluded at title and abstract: 23 (wrong intervention, sitting birth ball, 9; not a labor population with epidurals, 5; trial registration without results, 6; commentary, 3). Full texts assessed: 21. Excluded: 12 (no outcome of interest, 5; duplicate report, 3; abstract only with insufficient data, 4). Included: 9. The flow follows the PRISMA 2020 structure, with a separate column for each route, so each count follows arithmetically from the stage above it (Page et al., 2021).
References
Grenvik, J. M., Rosenthal, E., Saccone, G., Della Corte, L., Quist-Nelson, J., Gerkin, R. D., Gimovsky, A. C., Kwan, M., Mercier, R., & Berghella, V. (2019). Peanut ball for decreasing length of labor: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. European Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, 242, 159-165. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejogrb.2019.09.018
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. (2023). Chapter 4: Searching for and selecting studies. In J. P. T. Higgins, J. Thomas, J. Chandler, M. Cumpston, T. Li, M. J. Page, & V. A. Welch (Eds.), Cochrane handbook for systematic reviews of interventions (Version 6.4). Cochrane. https://www.training.cochrane.org/handbook
Page, M. J., McKenzie, J. E., Bossuyt, P. M., Boutron, I., Hoffmann, T. C., Mulrow, C. D., Shamseer, L., Tetzlaff, J. M., Akl, E. A., Brennan, S. E., Chou, R., Glanville, J., Grimshaw, J. M., Hróbjartsson, A., Lalu, M. M., Li, T., Loder, E. W., Mayo-Wilson, E., McDonald, S., ... Moher, D. (2021). The PRISMA 2020 statement: An updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. BMJ, 372, n71. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n71
How this MN600 Unit 3 example is structured
Auditability sets the order. Platform and date lead because the same string returns different counts through different interfaces and in different months. Concept blocks are built separately and combined late, and the population block pairs the MeSH headings from the worksheet with nulliparous and first birth as free text. Line 4 is the instructive failure: peanut OR birth ball returned 41 records about upright sitting balls in early labor. Rather than add NOT birth ball, which would silently discard any trial comparing the two devices, the log narrows the phrase and moves the remaining sitting-ball papers into screening, where each is counted as wrong intervention. Filters then appear one per row. The English limit removed three records, one of them a trial published in Turkish with an English abstract, and the log flags it rather than letting it vanish.
Get an MN600 Unit 3 example written to your instructions
Share the question from Unit 2 and a list of databases available through your library, plus what the Unit 3 instructions and rubric ask for. The log comes back line by line, filters separated, counts bracketed for your own run to fill, and a PRISMA diagram that matches the table. Free on a first custom sample; 24-48h. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
MN600 Unit 3 questions, answered
Why not just use NOT to remove irrelevant results?
Because NOT removes every record containing the excluded term, including the ones that matter. A trial comparing peanut balls with birth balls mentions both, so NOT birth ball would delete it without any trace in the count. Screening irrelevant records by hand takes longer but leaves a documented reason for each exclusion, which is what an auditable log is for.
Do conference abstracts belong in an evidence-based practice search?
They can, labeled for what they are. Much of the peanut ball literature began as quality improvement projects presented at nursing conventions, and an abstract can point to a later full paper or reveal results never published. Abstracts carry little detail for appraisal, so the log counts them separately and the matrix later treats them with caution rather than as trials.
My library has different databases. Does that matter?
Less than it might seem, provided the log says what was actually used. The logic of concept blocks, headings, free text and one filter per row transfers to Scopus, Embase or ProQuest as readily as to CINAHL. What cannot transfer is the counts: every number in the submitted version must be one the student's own search produced, on the day logged.