Research Sources for Nursing  

Start at BCC home page and click on “Library Services” to get Library home page.

v  Library databases provide articles from scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, books, and other sources.

To search, click on: Find Articles in Databases, then select Health Databases

AHRQ: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

http://www.ahrq.gov/

This government site includes:

National Guideline Clearinghouse which provides evidence-based clinical practice guidelines;

many reports on evidence-based practice.

Virginia Henderson International Nursing Library

http://www.nursinglibrary.org/portal/Main.aspx?PageID=4100

This site is a source of information for evidence-based nursing practice and other research.

PubMed

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

This is an enormous government database from the National Library of Medicine which provides millions of citations to journal articles and books. It does not provide the full text of journal articles. Medline is the biggest component of PubMed. If you use the BCC library database version of Medline, you can take advantage of its convenient interlibrary loan function.  

Databases which provide full-text medical reference books:

·         Magill’s Medical Guide provides overviews of many medical conditions.

·         Credo Reference provides a variety of medical reference books.

·         Gale Virtual Reference Library provides a variety of medical reference books.

Most databases provide help to cite your sources, including APA citation style. Their format is not always perfect, so it is advisable to check these citations against your professors’ guidelines and make necessary changes.

ebrary provides thousands of complete online books. Try any search terms you want, for example: evidence based nursing.

To use databases from home, you need to put in your library barcode numbers when prompted. These are on the back of your student ID.

CINAHL Plus with Full Text  provides thousands of articles from medical periodicals.

Let’s say you want articles about best practice to prevent falling by elders. Instead of typing a question or long phrase into the search box, choose the key words that express your topic and join them using the appropriate one of these connectors: and, or, not. These are known as Boolean connectors; using them is an efficient way to get results.

In the search box try typing: falls and aged and best practice

Next, click in the boxes to limit your results to full text and peer reviewed articles.

Health Reference Center Academic and Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition also provide thousands of articles from periodicals.

In the search box try typing: falls and elderly and best practice

Medline is a major medical database created by the National Library of Medicine. Many search results provide abstracts only, but the database allows you to request articles through interlibrary loan.