You don’t have to be a nursing student to have questions that can’t wait.
With the notion of caring for
multiple patients, not to mention becoming one yourself, there is a pressing need for the latest
medical information as soon as it is available. Nurses are expected to be well-versed in many aspects
of the field, so it can sometimes be difficult to remember all of that information or to keep journals or
textbooks with you.
However, those who have an internet connection and a computer or mobile device are at a great
advantage. If you need the answer to a question about medical terminology or a specific procedure,
time is an important factor. These 30 excellent search engines and databases can be used by anyone
from nursing students to professionals in the field. Those who need some help understanding medical
jargon or researching a specific topic will also find loads of help with these great search engines.
^HAHAHAHA
Nurse Portal
Stop here for a searchable database of links to over 22,000 nursing-related sites. You can search using
pre-sorted items, or check out their own journal. You can even search by country.
National Institute of Nursing Research
Get the latest developments in nursing research with a visit here. You can learn more about what
nursing research is, training in it, and the latest highlights.
Nursing World
Part of the American Nurses Association, this is one of the largest sites for nursing. Everyone from
advanced practice nurses to students will find guides just for them. You can also learn more about
nursing ethics, health care policy, and related matters.
All Nurses
Get information for nurses by nurses here. Over 500,000 have stopped by to discuss the profession.
Look up your query by topic, or you can simply check out the latest right on the homepage.
American Hospital Directory
This is the largest online resource for those looking for someone who works in a hospital. A veritable
Yellow Pages of the hospital world, you can search for many people and departments here. They even
offer profiles.
RCN
You don’t have to be attending the Royal College of Nursing to take advantage of their database. Top
news stories, health information, and more are listed. You can also use it to find jobs in the area.
There is also a podcast with more.
Nursing Research
Similar to the above, this search engine is all about nursing research. It looks through journals and
more to get its results. You can even submit your own article.
AHRQ
This is the official site of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. This special section focuses
on nursing research. The main site has more.
National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators
Learn all about ANA’s nursing quality database at this site. NDNQI(R) collects and evaluates unit-
specific nurse-sensitive data from participating hospitals in the United States and provides
comparative data reports to these hospitals. Check out the latest news and bibliographies with a visit.
Nurse Jobs
If you need to find a nursing job or research a specific position more, stop here. It has over 6,000
visitors each month doing just that. They also have a nurse database with even more.
Don't limit yourself to using only one or two databases when you are researching. Make sure to at
least start out with the library's three largest and most comprehensive health science databases -
CINAHL, MEDLINE and Nursing & Allied Health Database. These major databases are linked below
along with all the other library databases that are best suited to your particular research needs:
Academic OneFile
Extensive coverage of the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology,
literature and other subject, with full text from 14,000 journals, media podcasts, and medical videos.
Academic Search Premier
Our largest, multi-disciplinary database provides full text for more than 4,700 journals, including full
text for more than 4,000 peer-reviewed titles and indexes nearly 13,600 journal titles
CINAHL Complete
One of the most comprehensive resources for nursing and allied-health related articles and studies.
Most of periodicals that it accesses are peer reviewed, but not all of them, so you need to make sure
to limit your search results to peer-reviewed only.
Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials
A bibliography of controlled trials identified by contributors to the Cochrane Collaboration and others,
as part of an international effort to hand search the world's journals and create an unbiased source of
data for systematic reviews
Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
As Implied by the name, this is an extremely specific database that only searches systematic reviews,
the highest level of evidence.
MEDLINE with Full Text
One of the most comprehensive general medical databases. It has heavy overlap with CINAHL, but
also includes access to a wide array of other journals and periodicals as part of its wide focus. Also,
whereas most of CINAHL's resource are peer reviewed, everything that you will find in MEDLINE is
peer reviewed. It is structured almost exactly like CINAHL, and together these two powerhouse
databases should be the starting point of any sizable research assignment.
Nursing & Allied Health Database
Similar to CINAHL, this database primarily a vast array of nursing and allied health-centric journals.
Ovid
One of the largest single-database aggregations of searchable scientific, technical and medical full-
text articles available exclusively through Ovid Online. Includes jourals covering topics in evidence
based medicine and systematic reviews.
PolicyMap
An easy-to-use web-based Geographic Information System (GIS), use Policy Map to create maps of
the United States down to the Census block group in many cases. Available data includes
demographics, home sale statistics, health data, mortgage trends, school performance scores and
labor data like unemployment, crime statistics and city crime rates.
ScienceDirect
World's largest collection of full-text articles and book chapters covering science, technology,
medicine, health sciences, biology, chemistry, and environmental science.
Trip
Trip is a clinical search engine designed to allow users to quickly and easily find and use high-quality
research evidence
