Health and social care, nursing, midwifery, operating department practitioner and paramedic subject resources

Journal and database collections

• Academic Search Premier A multi-disciplinary database that contains full text for many peer reviewed journals.
• Anatomy TV provides 3D models and illustrations of human anatomy.
• Biomed Central Journals A STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publisher of 220 open access, online, peer-reviewed journals. The portfolio of journals spans all areas of biology and medicine.
• BMJ Best Practice is a clinical decision support tool that offers a step-by-step approach to help manage patient diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and prevention.
  • You usually need to login for the first time either through a university PC or on a mobile or laptop connected to Eduroam.
  • When you first access BMJ Best Practice you will be prompted to create an account.
  • Once you have created an account with your university email address you will be able to get access off site.
  • Once you have an account you can download an app for use on or off campus.
  • Further information on creating an account is available here.

• BMJ Journals is a collection of more than 70 medical and allied science titles. They are published by BMJ, the global healthcare knowledge provider and pioneer in the development of open access.
• Box of Broadcasts is an on demand TV and radio service for education. The academically-focused system enables you to record programmes from over 65 free-to-air channels, and search an extensive archive. Box of Broadcasts is intuitive and easy to use, so you may find you can start straight away
• British Psychological Society Provides access to a range of psychology journals including the British journal of Psychology.
• Childlink is unique in providing European, British and Irish information. Childlink has been designed to give the most up to the minute, easily accessible, cost effective service that includes information on Welfare, Education, Health, Lifestyle, Justice, Youth Affairs, Employment, and Benefit Issues.
• CINAHL Complete Access to top nursing and allied health journals, evidence-based care sheets and quick lessons providing overviews of disease and conditions.
• Clinical Key is a clinical based resource that contains a large number of e-books, images and videos. You need to create an account to use Clinical Key and to use the personalisation features. You can watch a video on creating an account here. It is divided into three collections:
• Clinical Key Nursing
• Clinical Key Medicine
• Clinical Key Midwifery
• Clinical Skills: The Faculty of Health, Social Care and Medicine subscribe to the resource Clinical Skills for Nursing, Midwifery, Paramedic and ODP students and will provide those students needing access with an individual login. Please contact [email protected] with any support needs.
• Cochrane Library contains 6 databases all of which are searched simultaneously: Includes research on the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of healthcare interventions. Systematic reviews, meta-analysis, cost-effectiveness and randomised controlled trial research studies are included within the Cochrane Library. A user guide, videos and webinar recordings are available from the Cochrane Library Training Hub.
• Emerald Insight contains a collection of journals for professionals and practitioners in the areas of health and social care, learning disabilities, children’s services, mental health and community.
• Health Research Premium Collection Over 800 full text nursing and health journals which cover nursing, allied health, alternative and complementary medicine and consumer health.
• Intermid A specialised collection of journal articles from British Journal of Midwifery and African Journal of Midwifery and Women’s Health. This collection is full text.
• Internurse A collection of 18 full text journals covering nursing, nurse prescribing, children’s, mental health, community and palliative care nursing.
• Nursing Times is a professional magazine which supports nurses and healthcare professionals in their career development. Peer reviewed articles help you to improve your practice, keep up to date with news on nursing, healthcare policy and practice. We have access to Nursing Times for 20 users, which means that you may have to wait until another user has finished reading before you can open the article you wish to read. To minimise waiting times, please close Nursing Times as soon as you have read, printed or downloaded article(s). 
• PsycARTICLES Full-text articles from 63 journals published by the American Psychological Association.
• PsycINFO Psychology database from the American Psychological Association (APA), containing citations and summaries of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations.
• PubMed comprises more than 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
• The Royal Marsden Hospital Manual of Clinical Nursing Procedures includes over 350 evidence-based clinical procedures related to every aspect of care, from hand washing to cardiopulmonary resuscitation. You can watch a video on how to use the Royal Marsden Manual here.
• SAGE Research Methods is a database which supports research at all levels by providing material to guide users through every step of the research process. Resources include a methods map, books, reference works, journal articles, podcasts and instructional videos from world-leading academics.
• ScienceDirect is home to almost one-quarter of the world’s peer-reviewed full-text scientific, technical, social and medical content.
• Scopus is the world’s largest abstract and citation database, containing 24,600 journals from 5,000 publishers. It is excellent for literature reviews or for finding out what has been published in your area as it can locate high quality journal articles, book chapters and more, for any subject.
• Wiley Online Library A large multi-disciplinary database covering medicine and health, nursing, psychology, social work and policy, family and children and education.

Medical professionals rely on information that is evidence-based in order to make the right decisions for patient care. What does that mean, really?

Evidence-based means that the information you as a professional use, is based on sound research, not someone’s opinion. Typically, that means you must locate the best, published research studies on the topic under enquiry. The published article (sometimes in paper, but most often in electronic form) presents the actual research results, so that you can see how the conclusions were reached. In addition, the researcher provides data to support those conclusions.

E-learning for Healthcare (e-LfH) is a Health Education England programme working with the NHS and professional bodies to support patient care by providing e-learning to the health and social care workforce.

• Module 1 – Introduction to Searching
  Consider the processes involved in searching and identify areas to develop.
• Module 2 – Where Do I Start Searching?
  Ensure that you are looking in the right places for information.
• Module 3 – How Do I Start to Develop a Search Strategy?
  Develop a simple search strategy and save time by planning your search.
• Module 4 – Too Many Results? How to Narrow your Search
  Techniques to narrow your search to find relevant articles in less time.
• Module 5 – Too Few Results? How to Broaden your Search
  Techniques to increase results when there doesn’t seem much available.
• Module 6 – Searching with Subject Headings
  Use advanced techniques to find more relevant articles in less time.
• Module 7 – How to Search the Healthcare Databases (HDAS)
  Use the Healthcare Databases (HDAS) to find relevant articles.

Newspapers can be a useful way of keeping up to date with current affairs or recent events. Newspaper archives usually contain issues which are less recent and which are useful for finding articles of a more historical interest.

• Daily Mail Historical Archive 1896-2004 contains news stories and images that capture 20^th century culture and society. Offers full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue.
• Gale OneFile: News contains articles from over 2300 newspapers from around the world. These include major British newspapers, as well as US and Australian titles. It also has thousands of images, radio and TV broadcasts and transcripts.
• Lexis+ contains over 650 regional and national UK newspapers from 1982 to the present. It is possible to limit your search to either national or regional titles, or you can search the whole of the newspaper database. Enter Lexis and click content and select Newspapers.
• Times Digital Archive contains every issue of The Times from 1785 to 2019. You can search by keyword or for a particular issue and each story appears as it looks in the original copy of the newspaper.

• Ambulance Quality Indicators This publication covers the Ambulance Systems Indicators (AmbSYS) and Ambulance Clinical Outcomes (AmbCO) which measure ambulance service quality in England.
• Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services (AIMS) useful website on action for better births including access to AIMS journal articles.
• AVERT is an international HIV and AIDS charity, based in the UK, working to avert and AIDS worldwide, through education, treatment and care.
• Bandolier an independent journal about evidence-based healthcare, written by Oxford scientists.
• BestBets (Emergency Medicine) Best Evidence topic reviews (BETs) provide rapid evidence-based answers to real-life clinical questions, using a systematic approach to reviewing the literature.
• Box of Broadcasts is an on demand TV and radio service for education. The academically-focused system enables you to record programmes from over 65 free-to-air channels, and search an extensive archive. Box of Broadcasts is intuitive and easy to use, so you may find you can start straight away.
• Foundation of Nursing Studies (FoNS) A registered charity working with nurses and healthcare teams to develop and share innovative ways of improving practice, thereby enabling them to provide care that is high quality, evidence based and meets the needs of patients.
• Joint Royal Colleges Ambulance Liaison Committee Its role is to provide robust clinical speciality advice to ambulance services. Provides access to the regularly updated UK Ambulance Service Clinical Practice Guidelines.
• King’s Fund helps to shape policy and practice through research and analysis, develop individuals, teams and organisations and promote understanding of the health and social care system.
• Mental Health Law Online covers mental health laws in the UK.
• Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) The Royal Society of Medicine is an independent, apolitical organisation, that provides a neutral platform for debate about healthcare topics. It was founded over 200 years ago and is one of the largest providers of continuing medical education in the UK.

Professional bodies

Professional bodies are the societies and associations that promote and regulate a profession and the people working within them.

• College of Paramedics formerly the British Paramedic Association, is the UK professional representative body for paramedics. Provides guidance, support and professional standard.
• Department of Health and Social Care The official UK Website of the Department of Health which is the government department responsible for public health issues, social care and the NHS. There are lots decision-making and research both within government and by the wider community.
• Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) The regulatory body is responsible for 15 health professional titles including Social Workers, Operating Department Practitioners and Paramedics.
• The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) A regulatory body set up by Parliament to protect the public by ensuring that nurses and midwives provide high standards of care to their patients and clients. Includes the register of Nurses and Midwives, and online access to the standards, guidance documents and circulars.
• Royal College of Midwives (RCM) Professional organisation and trade union for midwives.
• Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Represents nurses and nursing, promotes excellence in practice and shapes health policies.

UK National Statistics

• NHS Digital An Executive Non Departmental Public Body. The Health and Social Care Act 2012 sets out their responsibilities, including: collecting, analysing, managing and presenting national health and social care data.
• NHS England Statistics Statistics on a range of health and care subjects, used to inform debate.
• Official Statistics This site covers statistics relating to information gathered on public health, health services provided by the National Health Service (NHS), social care, and health and safety at work.
• Social Care Institute for Excellence An independent charity working with adults, families and children’s social care and social work services across the UK.
• Social Care Online is the UK’s largest database of information and research on all aspects of social care and social work. Resources include legislation, government documents, practice and guidance, systematic reviews, research briefings, reports, journal articles and websites.
• Trauma Audit and Research Network important information about the rates of survival for patients who have been injured and treated at different hospitals across England and Wales and the benefits of certain kinds of treatment.
• TRIP: Turning Research into Practice The TRIP Database is a clinical search tool designed to allow health professionals to rapidly identify the highest quality clinical evidence for clinical practice.
• Wellcome Trust Independent research-funding charity that aims to improve human health through funding which focuses on supporting outstanding researchers, accelerating the application of research and exploring medicine in historical and cultural contexts.
• World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a directing authority for health for UN countries responsible for providing leadership on global health matters.