Nursing Research: Nursing Journal Databases

Some assignments require that you find articles from peer-reviewed nursing or medical journals. These databases provide these journals as well as professional nursing magazines: 

• Health Reference Center by Gale - collection of health magazines and medical journals from many publishers (many are peer-reviewed). Use the peer-reviewed limit for only those results.
• Health Source: Nursing by Ebsco - collection of professional nursing or medical magazines and journals from many publishers. Click the box to limit results to full-text and peer-reviewed journals, if needed.
• Health Source: Consumer by Ebsco - collection of magazines and journals aimed at the general public.
• Alternative Health Watch by Ebsco - health magazines and journals about alternative or complementary health care treatments (e.g. acupuncture, herbal medicine, Chinese medicine, yoga, massage techniques, etc.)
• CINAHL (pronounced SIN-ALL, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature) - The most comprehensive index to all nursing and allied health periodical publications world-wide. At the opening screen, find "Journal subsets" and highlight "Core Nursing" Then insert search terms. This technique eliminates a lot of publications that are not easily located, and provides many journals that are available in the databases above. Authomatic links should allow quick access into these other databases when full-text is available. 
• Consumer Health Complete by EBSCOhost - Consumer Health Complete supports the information needs of patients and fosters an overall understanding of health-related topics. This resource provides content covering all key areas of health and wellness, from mainstream medicine to the many perspectives of complementary and holistic medicine.

Why use reference book articles? Reference book articles give you a broad overview of a disease or other health topic. When starting out doing research, it is always good to find a reference book article to learn the history of a disease or health problem, its causes and treatments, etc. Then find more recent articles in the nursing journal databases.

Print reference books: There are many good medical reference books available on the 2nd floor of the library, medical encyclopedias and dictionaries, and also all-topic handbooks such as the Nurses 3-Minute Clinical Reference. These are all in the R section (subject=Medicine) of the Reference location. Copy articles from books at the copier by the elevator. Most reference books arrange topics in alphabetical order. Or, look for topic words in the index, usually in back of the last volume of a set. For example, see the Gale Encyclopedia of Nursing and Allied Health, a 4-volume set in the RT section of reference.

Reference books in databases: There are a number of databases that have medical reference books:

• Stat!Ref  - We provided links to many of these books on the eBook tab, but there are many more reference books in this collection. For example try the Merck Manual for comprehensive descriptions of diseases and other conditions.  See the eBook tab above for more Stat!Ref info.
• Credo Reference  - has over 600 reference books on ALL subjects. To search only in the medical books, click "Advanced search" on the purple menu bar. Look for the line "Limit your search to ... selected subjects or titles." Click the plus + sign to view the subjects, and check the box "Medicine." Fill in search terms in boxes up above; check the box on the right that says "Search only within headings," (meaning the titles of the articles, which makes the results more relevant); click search.

Use the Full Text Finder  to find out what magazines, journals, and newspapers we have available, both in print and online.

If you have a specific article you are trying to find, and you need to know if we have it, open Full Text Finder, type in the name of the magazine, journal or newspaper. Check the Journals only, radio button to eliminate eBooks titles. The databases that have the magazine, journal or newspaper are shown, as well as print or microfilm holdings. Time periods for the holdings are also shown. Click links to open databases. Years are available for finding the exact volume and issue needed. Then look for the article by title of the article or by page number.

If you have the complete citation for a specific article, try using the tab "Linksource Citation Finder." Fill in the information and it will try to find the exact article in a database for you.  

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