Databases are searchable electronic tools which help you to identify journal articles, books and chapters in books, conference papers and other sources useful for your studies. A considerable number of the journals indexed are available in the Learning Resource Centres in print or in electronic full-text from the library catalogue. Some (bibliographic) databases just include abstracts which summarise what an article is about, and then give you a WebBridge link back to the catalogue to check if we have the journal in-house.

Brief details of the databases relevant to health courses are given below. The heading for each group leads to a page with fuller descriptions.

Healthcare databases

• AMED - nursing, allied and alternative medicine topics.
• British Nursing Database - UK based index for nursing and allied healthcare. Please note that Discover does NOT search the British Nursing Database. | British Nursing Database help guide [PDF]
• CINAHL Complete - nursing, midwifery and general healthcare. | CINAHL help guide [PDF]
• Global Health - specialist database relating to global public and environmental health. A key resource for public health students.
• Medline - very broad US-based general medical database.
• PsycARTICLES - full text articles on psychology and mental health.
• PsycINFO - general database of psychology and mental health.

Free online healthcare databases

• Cochrane Library - systematic reviews. Gold-standard research. | Getting started with Cochrane Library | Cochrane Library user guide
• PubMed Central - Free online digital archive of the U.S. National Institute of Health. Covers biomedical and life sciences journals.
• UK PubMed Central - Free UK archive of health and biomedical sciences literature.

Databases for related subjects

• Annual Reviews - covers 29 biomedical, physical and social science disciplines.
• Education Research Complete - excellent full-text database covering all aspects of education, including health care.
• ISI Web of Science - research index.
• SocINDEX - a wide ranging social science database with links to some full-text articles.

Useful general databases

• Academic Search Complete - full-text articles on general academic subjects.
• Credo Reference - searchable digital reference guide containing 100 reference sources including subject dictionaries, encyclopaedias, biographical sources and quotations.
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) - full-text, open access articles.
• Sage Premier (to 2016) - multidisciplinary database which includes several health care journals.
• Scopus - abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature with over 20,500 titles from 5,000 publishers worldwide.
• Newsbank - searchable database of newspapers.