LibGuides@Southampton: Health Sciences: Databases/help using databases

Key Databases

CINAHL Plus with Full Text This link opens in a new window
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CINAHL provides authoritative coverage of the literature related to midwifery, nursing, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, podiatry, health education and other related subject areas. CINAHL content includes full text for more than 760 journals and it indexes more than 4,900 journals.
MEDLINE (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
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MEDLINE is the world's best-known medicine and clinical science database, covering literature from around the world since 1946. It has a comprehensive set of controlled vocabulary called Medical Subject Headings (MeSH terms). MEDLINE is also available free on the web as PubMed.
The database contains more than 21.6 million records from 5,582 selected publications covering biomedicine and health from 1950 to the present. Produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, the MEDLINE database is widely recognized as the premier source for bibliographic and abstract coverage of biomedical literature. MEDLINE provides information from the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, as well as coverage in the areas of allied health, biological and physical sciences, humanities and information science as they relate to medicine and health care, communication disorders, population biology, and reproductive biology.

MIDIRS
You can search MIDIRS easily using CINAHL.
These instructions show you how to add it to your CINAHL search

Cochrane Library This link opens in a new window
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The Cochrane Library is the home of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, the leading resource for systematic reviews in health care. It also contains a register of controlled trials, Cochrane Clinical Answers, and Special Collections - curated content collections on specific healthcare topics.
TRIP This link opens in a new window
Trip is a tool for you to find and use high-quality clinical research evidence.
Web of Science Core Collection This link opens in a new window
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Provides references, and in many cases abstracts, for peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles in the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities. Includes the Science Citation Index Expanded (1970-present), Social Sciences Citation Index (1970-present) and Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1975-present). Also provides citation data and references to books and conference papers. Click on the Full Text Finder links to check for full-text.
Our access to WOS now includes the 'Emerging Sources Citations Index: 2005-present'. Journals included in ESCI cover all disciplines and range from international and broad scope publications to those that provide deeper regional or speciality area coverage.
Allied and Complementary Medicine Database This link opens in a new window
AMED covers a selection of journals in complementary medicine, palliative care and several professions allied to medicine including physiotherapy, occupational therapy, podiatry and rehabilitation.
EMBASE This link opens in a new window
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EMBASE is a leading clinical medicine and biomedical database, with particular strengths in drugs, toxicology, biotechnology, health affairs and forensic medicine. EMBASE includes all MEDLINE records, plus several million of its own - giving it rather better coverage of the literature in topics such as pharmaceuticals and of the European literature in general.
PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
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PsycINFO is the key database for psychology and related subjects. It contains references and abstracts for journal articles, books, book chapters and dissertations.
Provided by the American Psychological Association’s (APA). The largest database of peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health. Covers related subjects including medicine, law, neuroscience, business, human resource management, nursing, forensics, criminology, engineering, sociology and gerontology. Includes about 2500 journals, in many languages, from 1800s to present (including all articles from PsycARTICLES).
Scopus This link opens in a new window
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Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature: scientific journals, books and conference proceedings. Delivering a comprehensive overview of the world's research output in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities, Scopus features smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research.
Global Index Medicus This link opens in a new window
The Global Index Medicus provides universal access to biomedical and public health literature produced by and within low-middle income countries - contains all five WHO Regional Indexes; African, Eastern Mediterranean, South East Asia Region, Latin America and Caribbean and Western Pacific.
SCIELO This link opens in a new window
Free OA bibliographic database covering scientific literature from Latin America, Portugal, Spain and South Africa

Additional resources

AgeInfo This link opens in a new window
AgeInfo is an information service about old age and ageing provided by the The Centre for Policy on Ageing. *No password needed on campus. Off campus access by password (click on the password icon).
Acland's video atlas of human anatomy This link opens in a new window
Streaming video recordings from a 2005 DVD, popular with students and teachers in many other fields and also with people not on a professional learning path who are looking for information about human anatomy.
Anatomy.TV This link opens in a new window
Anatomy.TV provides interactive 3D anatomical animations, MRI scans and descriptive text for the entire human body. Built using real scan data from the Visible Human Project, for use by healthcare medical professionals.

British National Formulary (BNF)
The BNF contains information and advice on prescribing and pharmacology, along with facts and details about many medicines.

British Standards Online This link opens in a new window
Search and access the full text of all current British Standards and many international standards (e.g. ISOs/IECs). See Terms & Conditions for printing and copying.
*From 1/9/2021 onwards, you will need to have the FileOpen plug-in installed to access BSI documents.
The plug-in can be downloaded from Serviceline here. For more information click here.
Compendex This link opens in a new window
This database could be useful for information on bioenginnering e.g. replacement joints
Evidence Search: Health & Social Care This link opens in a new window
Find good quality, evidence based information in the areas of health and social care. Sourced primarily from the UK, resources are only included if they meet quality criteria set out by NICE.
IBSS - International Bibliography of The Social Sciences This link opens in a new window
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Provides references and, in many cases, abstracts for journal articles, books and book chapters in the social sciences, from 1951 to current.
IBSS has particular strengths in politics, economics, sociology and anthropology. Click on the TDNet links to check for full-text. No password on campus. Off campus VPN or Institutional login.

LWW Health Library Basic and Anatomical Sciences Premium Collection
The LWW Health Library is the portal to trusted Lippincott content, including the most commonly required textbooks and multimedia assets.
ISRCTN Registry
The ISRCTN registry is a primary clinical trial registry recognised by WHO and ICMJE that accepts all clinical research studies (whether proposed, ongoing or completed), providing content validation and curation and the unique identification number necessary for publication. All study records in the database are freely accessible and searchable.
OTseeker
OTseeker is a database that contains abstracts of systematic reviews, randomised controlled trials and other resources relevant to occupational therapy interventions. Most trials have been critically appraised for their validity and interpretability. In one database, OTseeker provides fast and easy access to information from a wide range of sources to inform occupational therapy.
PEDro the Physiotherapy Evidence Database
PEDro is a free database of over 26,000 randomised trials, systematic reviews and clinical practice guidelines in physiotherapy.
PROSPERO: international prospective register of systematic reviews

Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window
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This database abstracts and indexes the international literature of sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences.
No password on campus. Off campus Institutional login
Visible Body Human Anatomy Atlas This link opens in a new window
3D human anatomy multimedia modules covering anatomy, physiology, muscles, the skeleton, and the circulatory system.
KoreaMed This link opens in a new window
KoreaMed provides access to articles published in Korean medical, dental, nursing, nutrition and veterinary journals. It is an abstract database for the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (KAMJE) member journals.
HERDIN Plus This link opens in a new window
HERDIN Plus is a Philippine health research information management platform.
Hrcak This link opens in a new window
HRČAK is the central portal of Croatian scientific journals. HRČAK offers the access to the journals following the Open Access Initiative.

Planning a Literature Search

This interactive learning object shows you how to prepare your search strategy before you start searching the databases.

Planning Your Literature Search
This interactive learning objection will teach you how to develop an effective search strategy.
It includes quizzes to test your knowledge.

Subject Heading Searching

Subject headings are descriptive terms added to databases such as Medline and CINAHL to describe articles. One single subject heading is used to describe a concept, e.g. stroke for cerebrovascular accident or CVA. This means you don't need to worry about variation in spelling or jargon.

Using subject headings usually means you will find more relevant results.

However, not all concepts neatly fit a subject heading, so you may have to do a combination of free text searching and subject headings.

See the link below for a tutorial on using subject headings.

Using Subject Headings
This video will show you how to use Subject Headings in CINAHL and Medline.
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This video has been made by EBSCOhost, the company that supplies CINAHL and Medline.

Web of Science

Web of Science Citation Searching

Web of Science lets you search for other publications that cite an author's work.

Cited Reference Search
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These pages give you a detailed introduction to the Cited Reference Search in Web of Science

Tracking an article using Web of Science

Working Off-Campus

When you are using online resources, such as ebooks, journals and databases off-campus, you will need to use VPN (Virtual Private Network), which lets you open things as if you are on campus.

The University's VPN is called Global Protect. You can find instructions on using Global Protect here.

Help if you can't install VPN
If you're unable to install VPN, you can still open ebooks and journal articles using institutional access. This video shows you how.

Open Athens

Full-time undergraduate and PGDip Health Sciences are entitled to an NHS Open Access account. You will be registered for this at the start of your course.

If you have forgotten your password or have any other queries about Open Access, please email hslib@soton.ac.uk

Remember, the university has access to lots of journals and books. If you are off-campus, follow the information about the Southampton Virtual Environment.