In search of applications of nursing theories: the Nursing Citation Index.

Cited author searches were conducted in Nursing Citation Index to determine its utility in locating clinical studies that apply the conceptual frameworks of Dorothea Orem, Callista Roy, Martha Rogers, Betty Neuman, and Dorothy Johnson. Fully 75 percent of the relevant papers would have been missed by a conventional subject/textword search in the MEDLINE or CINAHL databases. Had Nursing Citation Index not been available, only 22 percent of relevant papers could have been retrieved by cited author searches of Social Science Citation Index. In summary, Nursing Citation Index provides an important indexing link between nursing theory and nursing research.