LibGuides: Nursing Resource Guide: Databases

Core Nursing Research Databases

The interdisciplinary nature of the health professions makes it necessary for students of nursing to have access to information on a wide variety of subjects—biological sciences, pharmacy, medicine, psychology, sociology, public health, hospital planning and administration, social work, child development, nutrition, education, community planning, public policy, communications, and business. The links below list some of the major resources available for research in the field of the caring sciences. If you want to search across all of our resources, please visit our homepage and use the Primo search box.

The TMC Library subscribes to over 300 medical databases. For a comprehensive list of all our databases, please visit our A-Z List. Below are just a few core research databases most nurses are familiar with for conducting literature searches. Please note these are not to used as Point-of-Care tools. Research databases may contain scholarly articles containing clinical findings that are not yet proven or conclusively established by medical science.

CINAHL Plus with Full Text This link opens in a new window Indexes the top nursing and allied health literature available including nursing journals and publications from the National League for Nursing and the American Nurses Association. Uses a controlled subject vocabulary and includes evidence-based care sheets, as well as continuing education units. Subscribed to in partnership with THSLC.
PubMed This link opens in a new window Find bibliographic citations with abstracts to journal articles in the life sciences with a focus on biomedicine. PubMed includes MEDLINE and citations to NCBI Bookshelf items.  Registered academic users may use the TMC Library Get Full Text icons to access full text.
Nursing & Allied Health Premium This link opens in a new window Full text and indexed journals in nursing, nutrition, oncology, pediatric care, pharmacology, public health, allied health, and more. Includes more than 12,000 full text dissertations, over 1,200 clinical training videos, conference papers, proceedings, and working papers.
MEDLINE (Ovid) This link opens in a new window Provides citations and abstracts from the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, allied health, and the pre-clinical sciences: Index Medicus, Index to Dental Literature, and International Nursing Index. Users have access to full text journals, books and multi-media. Provides unique filters and search features only available in the Ovid platform. Create an Ovid personal account to save your citation lists and search strategies and to share content.  Subscribed to in partnership with THSLC.

Additional Nursing Databases

Point-of-Care:

Micromedex This link opens in a new window Trusted source for Point-of-Care drug information.
ClinicalKey This link opens in a new window Find journals, ebooks, image, videos, practice guidelines, patient handouts and drug information across a wide range of medical specialties, as well as search Clinical Overviews/First Consult and Procedures Consult.    Note: Some book chapters do not provide PDFs; only HTML.
Access Medicine This link opens in a new window Includes Harrison's Online. Provides educational content for completing evaluations, diagnoses, and case management decisions, as well as for pursuing research, medical education, or self-assessment and board review.
Cochrane Library This link opens in a new window A collection of six databases that contain different types of independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making including Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Cochrane Methodology Register, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects, Health Technology Assessment Database and the NHS Economic Evaluation Database.
Stat!Ref This link opens in a new window A cross-searchable reference database of full-text medical, pharmacology and nursing books, drug information from AHFS, evidence-based resources from ACP, and tools like Taber's medical dictionary, Stedman’s and the National Guideline Clearinghouse.

Anatomy:

VisualDX This link opens in a new window An image-based differential diagnosis tool that is designed to help quickly identify diseases or conditions at the point of care. Includes more than 45,000 medical images, an extensive skin of color image atlas and over 1,300 pediatric and adult conditions. The mobile app is available on iPhone, iPad, and Android.

Exam Preparation:

StatPearls This link opens in a new window
Exam Master This link opens in a new window This question bank contains exam practice material for: USMLE Steps 1, 2 and 3; NAPLEX and PANCE exams, as well as medical certification exams for family and internal medicine.Register at the Exam Master site to set up a personal account.  After you authenticate with OpenAthens, enter your ExamMaster credentials.  Once your account is set up, you can save your credentials.  You must use your institutional email address when signing up with Exam Master so you can be authenticated as a valid TMC Library user.

Writing / Citing:

APA Style This link opens in a new window This website provides basic learning resources and quick reference on basic APA style rules.
RefWorks This link opens in a new window A bibliographic management tool that creates and organizes user's own personal database, formats bibliographies and manuscripts, and imports references from a variety of databases using Import Filters.  Allows users to import data from RSS feeds. Creates author, descriptor and periodical indexes when importing data. Use with Windows or Mac operating systems. Register for a Refworks account with your institutional email address to get started.