Nursing and Midwifery

It's really important in the healthcare field to use good quality, up to date literature and evidence in both your academic work and your professional practice. 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 - also known as bibliographic databases - gather together the contents of academic journals and 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.

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).

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.

These large databases index articles on many related subjects.

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

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:

• British Journal of Midwifery  
• Midwifery   
• Nursing Research    
• Journal of Advanced Nursing  
• British Journal of Nursing 
• European Journal of Palliative Care

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

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

If you need to access a resource that the library doesn't already have in its collection, then you can use our Document Supply Service. You can use the library's Document Supply Service to request journal articles, books, book chapters, or other resources not available at Sheffield Hallam. The Document Supply Service will then apply to borrow these resources from other libraries, both from within the UK and from around the world. 

More information about how to use this service can be found at the following link: Document Supply Service