Searching for literature in health and nursing care often involves using a number of different sources in order to make a thorough search.
Reference databases
If you are taking one of the educational programmes at The School of Health Science or if you study public health science or if you are taking a separate course in health there are mainly two big reference databases (see section Database guide) that are of interest for you in the fields of medicine and nursing care, with a lot of material of scientific character. They are called Medline and CINAHL, and they are two big international databases in this field.
The database Medline also exists in a free version on the web under the name PubMed. Medline and the version PubMed contain references for articles in medicine, nursing care, odontology, veterinary medicine and health care systems. It covers about 4.800 journals in biomedicine from most parts of the world and the time span covered is from 1966 onwards. Medline contains more than 12 million references to articles. On top of this, PubMed also gives access to the so called OldMedline which contains about 2 million references, dating from 1950-1965. These older references have not been provided with subject words.
The database CINAHL covers the field of nursing care and is mainly intended for nurses and health care staff. It contains references to articles from largely all English-language journals in the field. It also contains documents from The American Nurses’ Association and from The National League for Nursing. CINAHL covers subject fields such as care, nursing care, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, chiropractics, health- and medical care. About 2.500 journals are indexed in the database from 1982 onwards.
Also the database PsycInfo, whose contents focus on the subject psychology, can sometimes be of interest. If for instance you are searching for material about parents reactions to sudden infant death it might be appropriate to search this database also. It is a big international database with references to journal articles, books and book chapters, dissertations in psychology and related subjects such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing care, sociology, pedagogy, pharmacology, physiology etc. It covers the time from 1887 onwards. The database contains material from more than 1.300 journals.
Another reference database in this field with mainly Nordic material is the database SveMed+ It contains references for Nordic journals in the field of medicine and some of the material has a popular science character. It does not only contain references for Swedish journals, but also Norwegian and Danish, plus some references to articles in English. The time covered is from 1977 onwards.
Full text databases
If you want to search for journal articles in full text you should use the database ELIN@Blekinge. Here you will find articles in a variety of subjects, but also many articles in fields of specific interest for you. When searching ELIN, bear in mind that you need to be inventive about search terms. When you search here, you search a large number of databases simultaneously and thus there is no common thesaurus.
Here, more than in other databases, you need to be observant about the subject words or key words you find among the records from the search result. If for example you want to search for articles about terminal care there are several possible terms to search for, e.g. terminal illness, palliative care, palliative medicine, palliative treatment, end-of-life care, hospice care and of course terminal care. These words can be found by examining the keywords which almost all records in the database are provided with.
Ebrary is another valuable full text resource, which contains about 20.000 books in full text. It spans a diversity of subjects and it also contains much of interest for you as a student at The School of Health Science. For example you will find many books about nursing care, public health and related subjects there.
Evidence based medicine
The Cochrane Collaboration is an international organisation which aims to facilitate the making of well-founded decisions about measures in health care. This is done by the publication of systematic overview articles on the effect of different measures in health care. The Cochrane reports are created by a network of researchers and they are updated continuously. They can be said to be the international equivalent of the SBU reports.
The Cochrane Library - which is the main product of the collaboration - is updated quarterly and consists of a collection of databases in evidence based medicine. The most important one, The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, contains the so called Cochrane reports where current knowledge development in different medical fields is examined and compiled. The Cochrane Library is considered to be the best single source of documentation about the effects of health care. It is mainly intended for people who provide or receive health care and for those who are responsible for research, education, financing or administration at all levels.
You can read more about the Cochrane Library in the Sahlgrenska University Hospital’s manual on how to search the databases included.
SBU
SBU, The Swedish Council on Technology Assessment in Health Care, is commissioned by the government to assess different methods in healthcare from a collected medical, economical, ethical and social perspective. The SBU reports should point to the best available scientific evidence on benefits, risks and costs associated with different measures. SBU thus describes which methods are all in all most beneficial and least harmful, and point to the best way to economize health care resources. SBU should also identify methods which are used but which are not useful, which have not been studied or which are not cost efficient.
The purpose is to produce an impartial and scientifically based material for decision-making. SBU-reports are directed to all people who make decisions about which healthcare should be provided - both people who work directly with patients and those who organise and plan health care. The results also concern many patients and relatives.
On the SBU:s web site you can read more about what evidence based medicine means and you can also search among SBU’s material. Some publications are available in full text.
(Source: SBU utvärderar sjukvårdens metoder)
Dictionaries and other aids
To search the international databases English must be used as the search language. It is not always easy to find relevant search terms using an ordinary dictionary. A good aid in the field of medicine is the database Svensk MeSH. MeSH database is a database of the controlled vocabulary that is used with every article in Medline. There are nearly 22.000 MeSH-terms. Karolinska Institutet has translated these terms to Swedish in Svensk MeSH. It offers good help when you want to translate search terms to either English or Swedish. You simply type the term you want to translate either in Swedish or English in the search box. If the word you entered was not found you will get suggestions for related terms. It says …”or click here for suggestions”.
Many of the big databases on different subjects have a thesaurus, which is a list of the subject words used in that specific database. When using the thesaurus it is easier to find relevant subject words that will give more exact search results.
If you are just looking for a shorter explanation of a term a dictionary is a good aid when you are about to search. Here you can get good, short explanations for the terms you are looking for. Here are some examples of subject specific electronic dictionaries on the subjects of care/nursing care and psychology:
”The Oxford Companion to the Body”, which gives about 1.000 entries for terms about how the body works.
”Concise Medical Dictionary”, which is a dictionary with explanations for about 11.000 medical terms.
”An A-Z of Medicinal Drugs”, which gives access to about 5.000 entries for different medical preparations.
”A Dictionary of Nursing”, which is a dictionary with about 11.000 entries, mainly in nursing care
”A Dictionary of Psychology”, which is a dictionary in psychology and related disciplines.
Encyclopaedias
A good and rather exhaustive overview article can often be found in both general encyclopaedias as well as in more subject specific ones. Nationalencyclopedin and Encyclopaedia Britannica are examples of two great and extensive general dictionaries.
McGrawHill Encyclopedia of Sciene & Technology is a large encyclopaedia in technology and science. It includes many good articles in the field of medicine such as psychiatry, surgery, public health/epidemiology, infectious diseases etc. All three encyclopaedias exist electronically.
Anne-Marie Pettersson
2005-06-20
