Evidence Based Databases – Nursing & Allied Health

Nursing and Health Sciences Resources available from UA Libraries that addresses ………..

What is Evidence Based?
Which databases cover Evidence based articles?
Who can use the evidence based resources?
What is a systematic review?

The Joanna Briggs Institute’s Evidence Based Practice database of systematic reviews and Cochrane Library are available and they complement each other to investigate the evidenced based literature in the field. UA Libraries now subscribes to both resources.

Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) on OVID
JBI’s evidence-based practice model is considered a benchmark in the healthcare industry—encouraging healthcare professionals to implement an effective evidence-based practice program to provide the best possible patient care. It provides a detailed searching demonstration of this resource and includes information on the subject based nodes along with a review of the seven different publication types (including Best Practice Information Sheets, Evidence–Based Recommended Practices and Consumer Information Sheets) that can be used immediately to inform treatment and guide practice.

Cochrane Library
Cochrane Collection Plus is the most comprehensive collection of databases from the Cochrane Library. This is an essential source of high quality health care data for providers, patients and those responsible for researching, teaching, funding and administrating at all levels of the medical profession. Cochrane Collection Plus combines the NHS Economic Evaluation Database (NHS EED) and Health Technology Assessments (HTA) with the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR), Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE) and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials. Systematic reviews are found in two of these databases: the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) and the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness (DARE).

A Snapshot of PubMed Database

This snapshot of PubMed database will give you basic information about this most relevant and beneficial online resource in the field of medicine and nursing.

A service of the National Library of Medicine, PubMed provides access to over 11 million MEDLINE citations back to the Mid-1960s.  It provides links to many sites providing full text articles and other related resources.

Coverage: full text articles (only up to the most recent six months). You can use the UA libraries collections and Interlibrary Service to get full text of articles that are not linked to in the PubMed database.

Link: http://www.lib.ua.edu/databases/ and use the alpha list on the right side to get to “P” to look for PubMed.

Direct Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?db=pubmed

Tips for searching:

Begin a basic search by entering a keyword (Medical Subject Heading – MeSH Term) into the search field. Then narrow the results with related keywords or by using filters (to limit) offered on the sides of the search results page. Manage Filters link is on the on the right side and more additional filters on the left side of the results page. You can select language, type of publication, years of publication and more to filter the search results

What is MeSH terms in PubMed?

Medical Subject Headings – MESH

MeSH is the National Library of Medicine’s controlled vocabulary thesaurus. It consists of sets of terms naming descriptors in a hierarchical structure that permits searching at various levels of specificity. Each bibliographic reference is associated with a set of MeSH terms that describe the content of the item. Similarly, search queries use MeSH vocabulary to find items on a desired topic.

If you would like more information about this database, or if you would like a demonstration of it for a class, contact Mangala Krishnamurthy in Rodgers Library. Contact mkrishna@ua.edu.