LibGuides: Occupational Therapy: Overview

Introduction to Library Research for Occupational Therapy

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

Frequently Used Databases for Occupational Therapy

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

AccessMedicine This link opens in a new window
Complete suite of clinical and educational content from leading books, including Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, 21^st ed. 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.
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
Cochrane Library This link opens in a new window
Collection of databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making.
Includes these components:

The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) is the leading resource for systematic reviews in health care. Each Cochrane Review is a peer-reviewed systematic review that has been prepared and supervised by a Cochrane Review Group (editorial team) in The Cochrane Collaboration according to the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions or Cochrane Handbook for Diagnostic Test Accuracy Reviews. Currently there are over 5000 Cochrane Reviews including nearly 2,000 protocols providing an explicit description of the research methods and objectives for Cochrane Reviews in progress. Existing Reviews are updated as new information becomes available.

The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) includes details of published articles taken from bibliographic databases (notably MEDLINE and EMBASE), and other published and unpublished sources. CENTRAL records include the title of the article, information on where it was published (bibliographic details) and, in many cases, a summary of the article. They do not contain the full text of the article. About three-fifths of the records in CENTRAL are taken from MEDLINE. Also, each Cochrane Review Group maintains and updates a collection of controlled trials relevant to its own area of interest, these are called Specialized Registers. Each Cochrane Review Group may also collect items that are not relevant to its own field of interest; these are known as Handsearch Results.

Cochrane Clinical Answers (CCAs) provide a readable, digestible, clinically-focused entry point to rigorous research from Cochrane Reviews. They are designed to be actionable and to inform point-of-care decision-making. Each CCA contains a clinical question, a short answer, and data for the outcomes from the Cochrane Review deemed most relevant to practising healthcare professionals, our target audience. The evidence is displayed in a user-friendly tabulated format that includes narratives, data, and links to graphics. Cochrane Clinical Answers were developed by Cochrane Innovations and Wiley.

The Advanced Search option lets you search specifically for PICO terms.
DynaMed Plus This link opens in a new window
Evidence-based point-of-care clinical reference tool for health care professionals. Clinically-organized summaries for more than 3,000 topics. Install on mobile device.
MEDLINE via Ovid This link opens in a new window
Covers all aspects of medicine and health care administration. Includes some nursing and allied health.
Some users have recently had to reset their passwords to use all the features of Ovid-based MEDLINE. Contact a librarian if you have any questions.
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.
PubMed This link opens in a new window
Comprises more than 21 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
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.
UpToDate This link opens in a new window
Online clinical information resource with emphasis on internal medicine, obstetrics & gynecology, and family practice. Requires login both ON and OFF campus. You must then create a personal account.
iOS and Android mobile apps available. You can then access your account on your mobile device.
Covers 9,100+ topics in 20 specialties; graded treatment recommendations; links to referenced articles (when available); drug database & drug interactions program, including adult, pediatric, international, & natural drugs with drug-to-drug, drug-to-herb, and herb-to-herb interactions; medical calculators.

Citing UpToDate using APA style

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