LibGuides: Nursing: Overview

Introduction to Library Research in Nursing

Research in Nursing primarily means searching for journal articles, which you will mostly find in the databases CINAHL (the index for nursing and allied health professionals) and PubMed (the largest biomedical research database in the world). You will find links to these databases and other help with nursing research on this research guide.

Frequently Used Databases for Nursing

Start your search in the databases listed below. Other helpful databases may be found in the A to Z list in this Nursing guide.

CINAHL Complete This link opens in a new window
Primary journal index for nursing and allied health professions.
1937-present. Covers nursing, biomedicine, health sciences librarianship, alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health, and 17 allied health disciplines. Includes journal articles, evidence-based care sheets, health care books, nursing dissertations, selected conference proceedings, standards of practice, educational software, audiovisuals, and book chapters.
Short video tutorials on using CINAHL
PubMed This link opens in a new window
Largest biomedical research database worldwide. Always start searches for Nursing literature here or in CINAHL. This interface to Medline is publicly available, and thus will be accessible to you after graduation from UM-Flint.
PubMed indexes over 4,000 biomedical, nursing, dentistry and related journals, with over 21 million citations in MEDLINE, PreMEDLINE and related databases. PubMed is produced by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and provides links between article citations and relevant data in other NCBI ENTREZ databases, including Nucleotide and Protein Sequences, Protein Structures, Complete Genomes, Taxonomy, and others.

Proximity searching is available, which allows you to find terms within specified distances from each other.

Includes journal literature, 1950-present; selected online books. This version uses Outside Tool to link to resources at U-M Flint.

CoCites, "a citation-based method for searching scientific literature," is a Chrome- and Firefox-compatible browser plugin you can use with PubMed.
LibKey Nomad This link opens in a new window
This browser extension will help you access content more easily from PubMed.
Free downloadable browser extension to provide quicker, easier access to scholarly articles and to avoid paywalls. Currently available for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, Brave, and Vivaldi browsers.
Select the version of Nomad for your browser, and once it is downloaded, select the University of Michigan-Flint as your organization. [image] Once installation is complete, compatible databases will display clickable icons for the full text of the article, often with only one click. When available, it will also display icons linking to the issue of the journal in which the article appears. Example from PubMed
AccessMedicine This link opens in a new window
Medical and health care books, including Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine. Updated daily.
Designed for direct access to the information necessary for evaluations, diagnoses, case management decisions, conducting research, medical education, or self-assessment and board review. To access the mobile version, optimized for viewing on iPhones and other PDAs, register for a My AccessMedicine profile using the link above. Once you have done so, you can log on to the site using your My AccessMedicine username & password.
MEDLINE via Ovid This link opens in a new window
A different interface to Medline, the primary database offered by PubMed. This link is to the login page for Medline via UM-Medsearch. Use your uniqname and UMICH password to login to "Authenticated Sign-on."
1946-present. MEDLINE is widely recognized as the premier source for bibliographic and abstract coverage of biomedical literature. MEDLINE encompasses information from Index Medicus, Index to Dental Literature, and International Nursing, as well as other sources of coverage in the areas of allied health, biological and physical sciences, humanities and information science as they relate to medicine and health care, communication disorders, population biology, and reproductive biology.

MEDLINE and its content is also available in other versions:
- MEDLINE via FirstSearch
- MEDLINE via Web of Science
- PubMed: Comprises more than 21 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.

Additional databases for Nursing may be found under the A - Z Database tab in the column on the left.