Where to search?Databases & other sources

Deciding where to search

Summon may be a good starting point as it enables a very broad, seamless (although superficial) search across all UCS collections. If there is insufficient material in Summon, you will need to reconsider your research topic.

However, for searching for a literature review, you should search several individual nursing and health databases to find research articles. Databases allow more in-depth and systematic searching than Summon.

You may also need to extend your search to individual journals and specialist collections e.g. Cochrane Reviews.

Key nursing & health databases

The following databases are recommended for nursing and health and you should search several of these to ensure your search is comprehensive:

Database Hosting platform

Cinahl Ebsco

British Nursing Index Proquest

Nursing & Allied Health Proquest

Medline Web of Knowledge

Psychology Journals Proquest

Cinahl

Cinahl is the Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature and is the key nursing database and an excellent starting point for nursing, midwifery, health and radiography searches

It has expert filters which enable you to refine search results by age, gender and publication.

Tip! There are embargos on some key titles which means that there is no link to full-text for the latest year. You can use the A-Z of e-Journals to check if the full-text is available in another UCS database.

Proquest databases

Proquest is the major hosting service for UCS and provides access to the following nursing and health databases:

British Nursing Index - good for general nursing.

Nursing & Allied Health - covers nursing, allied health, alternative and complementary medicine.

Psychology Journals - good for mental health nursing.

Health & Medical Complete - useful for searching across all Proquest health related databases.

Medline & PubMed

Both databases cover authoritative medical information on medicine and health. Coverage is from 1950 until the present day. However, articles can be very specialist and may be more relevant to doctors than nurses.

Pubmed covers the same content as Medline with additional in-process and older content and access to Clinical Queries.

Neither databases contains much full-text but you can use the A-Z of e-Journals to check if full-text is available in another UCS database.

Other health databases

Cochrane Library - database of systematic reviews

Emerald Management Plus - covers health management rather than clinical practice.

Health Management (Proquest) - covers health administration.

Pharmaceutical News Index (Proquest) - latest information on pharmacology, medical technology, research and law.

Science Direct - a multidisciplinary database which includes some nursing and health content. It contains the full-text of some key journals which are embargoed in Cinahl.

NHS databases

Students in practice or on placement may access the NHS healthcare databases. Although use of these resources is not essential, they are a useful supplement to UCS resources and they can still be used when you leave UCS.

You will need an NHS Athens login to use these resources. You are eligible to apply for a login when you start your first placement or if you are already in practice. The hospital librarians can assist with this.

These resources are hosted by OVID and you can link to them at https://www.evidence.nhs.uk/

NHS databases

The NHS database collection consists of the following:

BNI, Cinahl and Medline - also provided by UCS

AMED (Allied and Complementary Medicine)

Embase (good for public health, drugs and pharmacology)

Health Business Elite (good for health care administration and non-clinical aspects of health care management)

Health Management Information Consortium (HMIC)

Medline

PsycInfo

Hand searching

You may also need to browse or search individual journals to limit your search to very specific titles This is particularly important when potentially relevant journals are not indexed in standard databases.

To identify relevant e-journals, use the A-Z of e-Journals. You can then either browse each issue individually or use the search function to quickly search across all issues.

Alternatively, you can hand search back files of key journals held in the library, although this is a very time consuming process.

Reference searching

If you are really struggling to find papers another option isto reference search. You can do this by finding one relevant paper and then scanning the reference list for similar papers.

This method is also useful for suggesting additional searchterms to introduce into your search strategy to improveyour search results. It can also help you locate papers in other sources e.g. in journals not included in standard databases.

The Literature Search Process: Guidance for NHS Researchers (2013)

Other information sourcesDatabases mainly include articles from high quality professional and academic journals. To extend your search to other material you might also consider using:

Government and organisation web sites Statistics Official reports Open access material Dissertations Conference presentations

Tip! Check any materials found on the web for authority, provenance, bias, currency etc.