For the purposes of this assignment, you should search in at least 3 databases and one grey literature to ensure you get a good, comprehensive search.
Unfortunately, there is no one answer to this question. As a scoping review reflects the state of the literature, different topics may return vastly different numbers of results. It also can vary across databases. In PubMed, you may find 3,000 in your initial search and in CINAHL only 700. Remember that once you are in Covidence, duplicates will be removed, and you will screen your initial results from your search string through a title/abstract search and then through a full-text review. After these steps, you will arrive at your final set of articles you will use for data extraction and your scoping review.
If you are getting a very large number of results (i.e. more than 8,000+ in each database), you may want to consider limiting to recent literature (such as in the last 10 years) to reduce the number of results you are getting.
In a scoping review, you will need to keep the search as similar as possible between different databases. In practice, you should only need to change a few things for each database:
You may want to consider Polyglot Search - a tool that will automatically translate searches between databases.
You will need to use the MeSH database to search for MeSH terms relevant to your subject. Then, you can add them to your search using the [Mesh] field tag. MeSH terms should be placed in your search alongside other relevant keywords and synonyms.
Example: "physician assistant*"[tiab] OR "physician associate*"[tiab] OR "Physician Assistants"[Mesh]
You can use a citation manager such as Zotero or Endnote to keep track of your articles and search results. Covidence is the recommended app to use for de-duplication, screening, and data extraction. Often, a simple word document is the best way to keep track of your search strategies and keywords.
As you are not able to fully follow the scoping review methodology in this course (such as having 2 independent screeners), you will not be able to publish the scoping review as-is. That being said, much of the work of a scoping review such as developing your search strategy, choosing your databases, and finding grey literature will already be completed.
If you would like to turn this into a publishable work, you will need to re-run the searches and redo the screening and data extraction process with a team of at least 2 people, and rewrite the scoping review with the new results.
As Still OneSearch is unique to ATSU, using Still OneSearch does not follow the reproducible methodology of a scoping review. In addition, as Still OneSearch searches so many databases at once, it is not as proficient at searching them individually, and you will not be able to get the same kind of comprehensive results as you will from searching databases directly.
That being said, Still OneSearch can be helpful for testing out keywords, doing quick searches for background literature, or testing out the feasibility of a research topic.