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 PubMed is a database providing abstracts to articles in medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, allied health, and the pre-clinical sciences; it also indexes articles from the Index to Dental Literature and the International Nursing Index. PubMed is a service of the US National Library of Medicine and includes millions of citations from health and life sciences journals from the present back to the 1950s. PubMed, when accessed by registered Academic users via The TMC Library, links the user to the full text of thousands of articles in subscribed journals. For all who access it, PubMed also links to thousands of open-access articles, either directly via publisher sites or via its PubMed Central repository.
Nursing & Allied Health Database 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 The unique features of Ovid's interface to the Medline database make it the preferred version of many researchers, particularly when researching for systematic reviews. Click "Change" next to "Resource selected" to limit your search to a desired subset or subsets of Medline, and make use of unique limiters and standard Ovid database features. 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. This version of Medline is restricted to The TMC Library's academic users. 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 1000+ textbooks, 500+ journals, practice guidelines, drug info, and 5,000+ patient handouts in English and Spanish. Also includes First Consult, ProceduresConsult, over 13,000 videos and millions of images. You can filter your search results by clinically meaningful subcategories (content type, specialty, disease, and more).
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 The Cochrane Library is 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 NHS Economic Evaluation Database
Stat!Ref This link opens in a new window Stat!Ref is 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 VisualDx is a web-based clinical decision support tool used to enhance diagnostic accuracy, aid therapeutic decisions, and improve patient safety. TMC Library’s VisualDx subscription includes mobile access. The VisualDx app is available on iPhone, iPad, and Android.

Exam Preparation:

Exam Master This link opens in a new window Exam Master's question bank contains exam practice material for: USMLE Steps 1, 2 and 3; Medical Board Exams, including family practice, internal medicine, and surgery; several medical specialties, including anatomy, microbiology and physiology; and Part I of the National Board Dental Exam. Users must register at the Exam Master site after logging in to their library remote access accounts. Setting up a personal login with Exam Master allows users to create and save their exam questions to their own Exam Master accounts. To access your Exam Master account, log in to your HAM-TMC Library account first. In the database, follow the link that says, "Not registered yet?" if you are a new user. 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 RefWorks is a web-based bibliographic management tool that enables users to organize and create a personal database online, format bibliographies and manuscripts, and import references from a variety of databases using the already-created Import Filters. Users can establish links to RSS feeds and import data from those feeds directly. RefWorks automatically creates author, descriptor and periodical indexes when importing data. It can be used across multiple platforms, including Windows, Mac, and Unix.