LibGuides: Nursing and Midwifery: Journal Databases

Why you should use databases

It's really important in the healthcare field to use high quality, up to date evidence to support your academic work and your professional practice, so that you can produce strong academic work and informed patient care. Recent expert research tends to be published as articles in academic journals. These articles usually cannot be found by a search engine like Google, but are indexed in specialist databases.

Academic databases allow you to find published articles about a particular topic. Searching a range of academic databases allows you to be more targeted in your search and find more of the relevant literature compared to only searching in Library Search. The Library provides these databases in collaboration with your lecturers and academic staff, helping you find the most appropriate materials for your subject area.

To search the literature in a comprehensive and structured way, you should use the databases that are relevant to your subject. The links to the most relevant databases for Nursing and Midwifery research are linked on this page.

Support with database searching

Remember to click 'Check SHU Links' for each reference located in an academic database, particularly when there isn't a PDF link. For more information about how to use databases effectively, see the 'Finding the Literature' page in this subject guide. The library also offers support with literature searching (more information about library support here).

Key subject databases for Nursing and Midwifery

CINAHL Complete
I’m having a makeover! This database will be changing its interface on Monday 7th July 2025. This means that the database will look different, and some of the features available will change. Make sure you export the contents of your custom folders before the switchover. For more information on these changes, read our new EBSCOhost interface guide: https://tinyurl.com/ebsco2025
Cinahl Complete with Full Text, the authoritative bibliographic database for nursing and allied health, provides full text for 1350 journals. alternative link
Coverage is from 1937 onwards and also includes books, nursing dissertations, conference proceedings and standards of practice.Cross search available with all EBSCO databases, select Choose Databases and tick those you wish to add to your search.
MEDLINE (Ebsco)
I’m having a makeover! This database will be changing its interface on Monday 7th July 2025. This means that the database will look different, and some of the features available will change. Make sure you export the contents of your custom folders before the switchover. For more information on these changes, read our new EBSCOhost interface guide: https://tinyurl.com/ebsco2025
MEDLINE provides authoritative medical information on medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system and pre-clinical sciences.
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Created by the National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE uses MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) indexing with tree hierarchy, subheadings and explosion capabilities to search citations from over 4,800 current biomedical journals. Included are citations from Index Medicus, International Nursing Index, Index to Dental Literature, HISTLINE, SPACELINE, PREMEDLINE, AIDSLINE, BIOETHICSLINE, and HealthSTAR.
Cross search available with all EBSCO databases, select Choose Databases and tick those you wish to add to your search.
Maternity and Infant Care
Maternity and Infant Care is an important essential resource for academics and healthcare professionals involved in the care of women and infants. Access to this database through SHU has a limit of 10 users at once. If you receive an error message saying the database is unavailable, it may be that there are already 10 people from SHU accessing the Maternity and Infant Care database at that time - we recommend trying again later.
Contains over 120,000 references with abstracts to journal articles from over 550 international English language journals, books, and grey literature relating to the midwifery profession, pregnancy, labor, birth, postnatal care, and neonatal care and the first year of an infant's life. Database coverage is from the mid-1980s and approximately 1000 records are added to the database per month.
APA PsycInfo
This database is published by the American Psychological Associations and provides comprehensive indexing and abstracts of the international psychological literature from the 1800s to the present. Documents indexed include journals, articles, books, dissertations and more. 90% of the 3,000+ titles indexed in APA PsycINFO® are peer-reviewed.

Coverage: 1806 - current
Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts (ASSIA)
Index and abstracts for health, social services, psychology, criminology, sociology, economics, politics, race relations and education. Currently contains over 312,000 records from 650 journals in 16 different countries, including the UK and US. Coverage is from 1987 onwards. Updated monthly, with more than 1500 records added per update.

Other databases for health research

BMJ Best Practice This link opens in a new window
This resource contains updated research evidence from international experts. It is a clinical decision support tool that offers a step-by-step approach to help manage patient diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and prevention.
Cochrane Library This link opens in a new window
The Cochrane Library contains high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making. It includes reliable evidence from Cochrane and other systematic reviews, clinical trials, and more.
Cochrane reviews bring you the combined results of the world's best medical research studies, and are recognised as the gold standard in evidence-based health care.
PubMed This link opens in a new window
PubMed
PubMed is a free to use life sciences database. The resource is maintained by NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information, USA). PubMed also has a login option if users want to save searches and add items to collections, but this means you need to use an external third party login, such as a Microsoft or Google account. There is no Hallam Library login to PubMed available via the institution login with SHU login details.
PubMed includes abstracts and citations to over 37 million articles. Some of the abstracts include the full text for anyone to view within PubMed. If the article is abstract only, click the SHU Links button to see if we have it in the library collection.
PubMed is a search tool to access citations, abstracts and links to full-text journals at web sites of participating publishers. Including over 15 million citations from journals and covers 4,800 biomedical science journals.
TRIP This link opens in a new window
TRIP is a useful database for locating health research. It enables cross-searching of a wide range of evidence-based resources.

Evidence for Policy & Practice Information Centre
The Evidence for Policy & Practice Information Centre is a team of researchers and professionals based at University College London who conduct systematic reviews across health, education, welfare and other public policy sectors. They also provide guidance on the process of conducting full systematic reviews.
National Research Register
The National Research Register (NRR) is now archived and comprises research projects funded by, or of interest to, the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS) up to and including 2010. Please enquire at the National Institute for Health Research for current research activity.

SAGE Research Methods Video This link opens in a new window
SAGE Research Methods Video contains nearly 130 hours of video, including tutorials, case study videos, expert interviews, and more, covering the entire research methods and statistics curriculum. The videos can help to bring methods to life: instead of reading about how to conduct a focus group, users can watch one in action.

Sometimes a concept is hard to grasp through text alone, but by hearing an expert explain it on film and seeing the research technique in action, it becomes clear.

Through these videos students can find extra help and support to guide them through every step of their research project
PTSDpubs This link opens in a new window
This database, formerly called PILOTS, is produced by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD. The database provides citations and abstracts to the worldwide literature on PTSD and other psychological effects of trauma. Coverage is from 1871 onwards and is updated monthly.

Multidisciplinary journal databases

These large databases index articles on many related subjects.

Proquest Central This link opens in a new window
A multi-disciplinary full text database covering business, health and medical, social sciences, education , science and technology, including core titles in the performing and visual arts, history, religion, philosophy, and language and literature. It includes both scholarly journals as well as market research and industry reports, working papers and full-text dissertations.
SCOPUS This link opens in a new window
Scopus is a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary abstract and database curated by subject matter experts. Scopus is also a citation index, which means that the records in the database contain information on citations made in that publication and it links that information so you can identify which publications have cited that one, and how many times a publication has been cited.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Web of Science provides access to a collection of databases. The default search is of the Web of Science Core Collection, which includes the Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Conference Proceedings Citation Index and Emerging Sources Citation Index. This enables you to search scholarly journals, books and proceedings in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities and navigate the citation network.
By clicking on the drop-down menu next to ‘Search in:’ you can choose to search other databases: BIOSIS Citation Index (1969-2008), KCI-Korean Journal Database, Medline, Preprint Citation Index and SciELO Citation Index.
ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window
ScienceDirect provides journal articles and eBooks on the physics, engineering, mathematics, life sciences, health, computing and social sciences. The default search includes both ebooks and journal articles. You can use filters in your results to select between them: alternatively, you can use the search tab. Search results for eBooks are at chapter level.
Alternative link via Shibboleth
Articles and eBooks can be downloaded, saved permanently and kept as PDFs that you can view offline.
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) This link opens in a new window
An online directory that indexes and provides access to quality open access, peer-reviewed journals.

Currently includes over 5200 journals. DOAJ is multidisciplinary and includes journals in several languages. Updated regularly.
Currently includes over 5200 journals. DOAJ is multidisciplinary and includes journals in several languages. Updated regularly.

Other databases that you can access through SHU can be found on the library's A-Z of databases.

Key journals

It is important to scan the contents of key journals in your subject area on a regular basis to keep up to date with news and developments.

Link to key electronic titles here:

There are also large journal collections you can access to find literature in specific fields. These are listed below:

Nursing Times This link opens in a new window
Provides access to the Nursing Times journal as well as learning units on fundamental aspects of nursing care.
First time users: Set up an account by going to Login/Register and then choose Register New Account. You must use an email address with one of these domains: @my.shu.ac.uk, @student.shu.ac.uk, @staff.shu.ac.uk OR @shu.ac.uk .

To access the learning units or NT Portfolio, click ‘CPD’ in the top navigation bar, then click 'Enter Zone Now'.
Internurse.com This link opens in a new window
Internurse is a searchable archive (1995 to present) of full-text peer-reviewed articles from 19 nursing journals, a good starting point for the level 4 Nursing modules..
You can also browse the tables of content for these journals (click on Journals next to Internurse logo near the top left-hand corner).The titles incl: British Journal of Cardiac Nursing, British Journal of Community Nursing, British Journal of Healthcare Assistants, British Journal of Neuroscience Nursing, British Journal of Nursing, British Journal of School Nursing, Gastrointestinal Nursing, International Journal of Palliative Nursing, Journal of Children's and Young People's Nursing, Journal of Renal Nursing, Journal of Wound Care, Nurse Prescribing, Nursing and Residential Care, Practice Nursing
intermid.co.uk This link opens in a new window
Peer-reviewed archives of articles from the British Journal of Midwifery, the UK's leading clinical journal for midwives, and the African Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health, a leading African title.
Clinical reviews, professional articles and in-depth research on all aspects of midwifery training and practice are searchable through intermid. This site contains all articles published in the BJoM since 1996 together with coverage from 2007 in the African Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health. The African Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health (AJM) is a new quarterly peer-reviewed and evidence based journal for all midwives and nurses who wish to keep up-to-date with developments in Africa, in matters relating to midwifery and women's health. The journal provides clinical and professional articles and aims to advance skills, knowledge transfer and academic discussions in all aspects relating to midwifery practice and women's health matters in Africa.
Journals@Ovid Ovid Full Text This link opens in a new window
SHUjournals@Ovid, a full text collection of almost 100 SHU journals predominantly covering Nursing and Health & Social Care.
Journals are grouped according to subject areas and individual titles can be easily browsed.

Browse key journals

BrowZine
Browzine allows you to look through key journals in Nursing & Midwifery specialisms. Click through to a journal's contents page to access the articles.

It is important to scan key journals in your subject area to keep up to date. The Articles in Press feature displays the most current articles before they have been officially given a volume and issue number. When you have selected a journal, Articles in Press appears on the left, just below the journal cover image.

Getting started with databases: quick video guides

The three minute videos below introduce you to some of the key databases for your subject.

How to Search a Database - MEDLINE
Using CINAHL Headings
Introduction to PsycInfo
Introduction to SCOPUS
Information literacy skills - part 1
This is the first of two information literacy videos that will help you to search databases more effectively.
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This video has sound and was produced for L6 health and social care dissertation students.
Information literacy skills - part 2
This is the 2nd information skills video. It provides tips on what to do when you are happy with your search terms.
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This video has sound and was produced for L6 health and social care dissertation students.
Maternity and Infant Care - Ovid Training Videos
A series of training videos provided by Ovid.

What to do if the Library doesn’t stock an article

In the course of searching these specialist resources, you may find articles that we do not have access to in our Library collection. If this happens, we can get the articles for you through our Document Supply Service.

This link is the information about how to use the Document Supply Service at Sheffield Hallam.

Document Supply Service

Nursing and Midwifery