Purpose: Effective literature searching is essential to support evidence-based nursing. The aim of this study was to present our recent systematic search experience to identify guidelines in PubMed for prevention of catheter-associated urinary tract infections. Methods: Five approaches to the literature search via PubMed were employed. The searches were restricted to items published from 1980 to 2010, for patients admitted to hospital, and in the English language. The search results were compared using the number of records and relevant items, and the sensitivity and precision of each search strategy. Results: The individual approaches retrieved 19-141 of records and 3-6 of relevant items. Sensitivity ranged from 37.5% to 75.0% with the highest values for simple searches and a search combining MeSH terms and free textwords with a methodological search filter. Precision varied from 4.3% to 21.7% and the highest precision was found for MeSH terms with limits feature. Conclusion: The simple search in PubMed is an appropriate way for nurses in a busy clinical practice to search the literature for evidence. However, several approaches using MeSH terms, free textwords, limits feature or methodological search filters are also required to have more efficient and better informed search results.