Nursing program: Research skills: Finding articles
Provides starting points for research in TCC's Nursing Program
Article databases
The vast majority of free scholarly, peer-reviewed articles are in journals that TCC stores online.The easiest way to identify articles on your topic and retrieve the full text is to use the Library's databases.
For nursing topics, we recommend the following databases:
- CINAHL with Full Text This link opens in a new window
(Ebsco) The Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health with Full Text provides access to over 600 journals from the fields of nursing and allied health. - ProQuest Periodical Databases This link opens in a new window
The largest database to which TCC subscribes, ProQuest provides coverage of a wide range of topics, with a mix of popular and scholarly sources. ProQuest has great coverage of nursing topics, but be sure to click the "Peer reviewed" box on the search screen to ensure that the sources you find are appropriate for your use in the Nursing Program.
- PubMed
PubMed comprises more than 29 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher Web sites (i.e. not all articles will be available to you). Note that PubMed is a freely available database on the open web rather than a library database, and some articles will not be available for free. Be sure that the "Free full text" box on the left side of your search results screen is checked to ensure that you can freely access the articles listed.
- PsycARTICLES This link opens in a new window
(Also known as APA PsycARTICLES).(Ebsco) Periodical database of peer-reviewed, scholarly, and scientific articles in psychology. - ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window
Includes about 30 nursing journals--most in specialized branches of nursing. Depending upon your topic, it could be the best database for your research. Talk to a librarian about setting up a free, personal account in order to obtain the full text of articles or view this handout for instructions.
Database tutorials
The following video tutorials will show you how to search some of the databases listed above:
Search terms & search tips
- Consider using nurs* in one of your search boxes. Nurs* gives the search engine directions to find every word beginning with those four letters: nurse, nurses, nurse's, nurses', nursing
- To force the search engine to look for two or more words in a particular order and with no other words in between, use the phrase search. Place the phrase in quotation marks: "diabetic foot" "culturally competent nursing"
- If you are unsure of the form of a word (or the spelling!) use an asterisk as a wild card. For example: diabet* will return results containing diabetes, diabetic, diabetics
- Use the "Boolean operator" AND to make sure that the search engine searches for all of your words or phrases. AND directs the search engine to provide results that contain the items on both sides of the operator, for example, intubation AND emergency
- Use the "Boolean operator" OR to look for synonymous terms. For example, if I am wondering whether there is an organization centered around caring for obese patients, I might search Google like this: "bariatric nursing" AND (association OR organization OR society). This means I'll take any results that include the phrase bariatric nursing and any one of the other three terms.
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