LibGuides: Allied health: Using databases

Using databases

A database search is subject specific and is a more strategic search than searching on Discover.

It can help you find information quickly and efficiently and allows you to combine search topics, use alternative search terms, to filter and narrow your results (by date or subject area for example) and save your searches for later.

See below for recommended key databases in your subject area.

Key databases

CINAHL Complete (Cumulated Index for Nursing and Allied Health)
An authoritative source within the field of nursing and allied health. Functionality to search using a combination of free text (or keyword) and thesaurus terms (known as CINAHL headings) to produce precise results.
AMED (Allied and Complementary Medicine Database)
An alternative medicine database for physicians, therapists, medical researchers and clinicians looking to learn more about alternative treatments.
Medline (EBSCO)
An authoritative source of journal literature in the biomedical and life sciences. Functionality to search using a combination of free text (or keyword) and thesaurus terms (known as Medical Subject Headings or MeSH) to produce very precise results.
ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health
Reliable information covering nursing, allied health, alternative and complementary medicine.
ProQuest Health and Medical Collection:
Extensive coverage of clinical research in the fields of health and medicine.
Cochrane Library
A collection of six databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making.
PEDro
Physiotherapy Evidence database of randomised trials, systematic reviews and clinical practice guidelines in physiotherapy.
SPORTDiscus
SportDiscus covers a range of journals focusing on sport and sport medicine research.
Sports Medicine and Education Index
Subjects include sport sociology/psychology, motor learning, recreation, standardised fitness tests, coaching and training.
OT Seeker
Contains abstracts of systematic reviews, randomised controlled trials and other resources relevant to occupational therapy interventions.
Social Care Online
Produced by SCIE this is the UK's largest database of information and research on all aspects of social care and social work.
Web of Science
High quality sources of scientific research including health and medicine. Includes functionality to view the number of times an article has been cited and the journal impact factor.
BioDigital human
Explore anatomy, conditions and treatments in interactive 3D, using a virtual map of the human body. Provides over 8,000 individually selectable anatomical structures, 600 simulated health conditions, and a toolkit to map and visualize data. Includes quizzes and activities to test your learning.
Compendex
Compendex is the broadest and most complete engineering literature database available in the world. It provides a global view of peer reviewed and indexed publications with over 20 million records from 77 countries across 190 engineering disciplines.

A full list of all the databases we subscribe to is available from the Database A-Z.

Tip: the Database A-Z is for finding databases by name only. You cannot enter search terms here.

Google Scholar versus Library Databases

Google Scholar is a good place to start research, test search terms and get a broad overview of the research that is available on a topic. However, you should not rely on Google Scholar alone for a number of reasons:

It tends to generate very high numbers of results, many of which may not be relevant to your search criteria
Covers many different subject areas making it harder to find research that is related to your field of study
Not restricted to scholarly peer-reviewed content
Limited options to refine a search

In comparison, databases often focus on a particular field of study, provide many options for refining and limiting results and will retrieve high-quality scholarly content.

A search for "mental health" AND "climate change" on Google Scholar returns about 132,000 results:

Here is the same search using ProQuest Public Health database using the option to find the terms in the citation or abstract only and also with filters applied for scholarly peer-reviewed articles. This returns about 432 results:

This is a more effective way to search and leaves far fewer results to screen through.

Note: If you are undertaking a literature search for a dissertation or honours project you will be required to use subject databases and provide evidence of database searches.