The NHS Knowledge and Library Hub is a good starting point for many searches in healthcare. Visit our library hub page for more information.
However, if you need a more focused, in-depth search of the literature then a search of a specific healthcare database is recommended:
MEDLINE covers medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and more (EBSCO and OVID)
Embase (Excerpta Medica Database) covers biomedical sciences and pharmacology (OVID).
The Cochrane Library is a collection of databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making.
Trip was designed, twenty-five years ago, as a tool to support clinicians to answer their clinical questions using the best available evidence.
This focus remains and a major feature of Trip is evidence-based content (with a focus on evidence at the top of the evidence pyramid). While the focus is on clinicians, Trip is widely used by librarians and other information specialists.
U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature.
It provides references to literature in the most relevant nursing and midwifery journals. Also included are relevant nursing articles from selected medical, allied health, community and health management journals. Coverage is mainly titles published in the UK, plus a selection of important international nursing titles.
Coverage: 1994 - current
As part of the comprehensive coverage offered by this database, indexing and abstracts for the most important scholarly business journals back as far as 1886 are included. In addition, searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,300 journals.
Topics covered include hospital management, hospital administration, marketing, human resources, computer technology, facilities management and insurance. Health Business Elite contains full text content for more than 570 journals such as H&HN: Hospitals & Health Networks, Harvard Business Review (available back to 1922), Health Facilities Management, Health Management Technology, Healthcare Financial Management, Marketing Health Services, Modern Healthcare, and many more.
Documents indexed include journals, articles, books, dissertations and more. 90% of the 3,000+ titles indexed in APA PsycINFO® are peer-reviewed.
These modules are designed to help healthcare workforce (clinical and non-clinical) build confidence to search published literature for articles and evidence relevant to their work, study and research. The modules are short (each taking no more than 20 minutes to complete) and may be ‘dipped into’ for reference, or completed to obtain a certificate. There are seven modules suitable for novice searchers and those wishing to refresh their knowledge: