Topic Background
For help navigating this Guide: Nursing and Allied Health Subject Guide Quick Tour video (3:13)
To better understand (and write about) your research topic, you should brainstorm the main concept(s) involved, and find encyclopedia entries on that concept. This will not only give you an historical context (how has the thing, theory, or technology evolved over time?, what people, laws/policies are involved?), but will also help you find the words and phrases that are essential for searching the scholarly literature. Once you have a handle on your concept(s), search the journal, book and other literature, using the "Information Sources" section below.
Information Sources (search the literature)
CINAHL is best for nursing-specific journal literature, but you may want to try others, such as MEDLINE, for topics that cross into more general health and medicine fields, or try searching our e-books. Search Tips Video Tutorial
- Ovid Nursing + Emcare DatabaseTo only see full-text results when searching: just select "Your Journals@Ovid" on the landing page. 53 scholarly journals in nursing and allied health, plus Emcare, an indexing service for lots of other nursing content.
Basic Ovid search tutorial. - CINAHL Plus with Full-textBest place for scholarly nursing literature. All results from peer-reviewed journals. Help using CINAHL/MeSH Headings
- Nursing eBooksBrowse/search within thousands of full-text nursing and health eBooks.
- Cochrane Library: Evidence-Based Health Informationa collection of six databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making
- Data & Statistical SourcesStatistical information & data sets, such as those produced by HHS, CDC and other gov't & non-governmental orgs.
- MEDLINE with Full TextScholarly literature on health & medicine. Help using MeSH headings to search
- OAIsterGreat for searching legislation and policy documents. Grey lit database of 30 million digital resources.
Did you know there is a wide variety of quality statistical data relating to nursing and health care out on the open web?
Sun: 11 a.m. - 7 p.m.
Mon-Thu: 11 a.m. - 7 p.m.
Summer Hours
July-Aug: Mon-Thu: 12 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Phone: 800-847-3000, ext. 2222.
or check our knowledgebase or submit a question via online form.
Please note: If you need to request accommodations with content linked to on this guide, on the basis of a disability, please contact Accessibility Resources and Services by emailing them at Disability.Services@sunyempire.edu. Requests for accommodations should be submitted as early as possible to allow for sufficient planning. If you have questions, please visit the Accessibility Resources and Services website.
