Searching for articles - Revalidation - CPD resources - LibGuides at Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust

Help guides

Essential search skills
How to formulate a search question

Break down your topic into clear concepts using the PICO model

Perform a simple keyword search in the healthcare databases

Need help with literature searching?

Not sure where to start when searching for journal articles?

Struggling to find what you are looking for?

You can ask one of the library staff to help you with a search

Contact the Clinical Librarians to arrange a 121 session. We can also run group sessions for teams.

Finding journal articles

If you would like to read a paper to reflect on for revalidation but don't know what recent articles have been published on your topic, you need to do a literature search.

This page aims to signpost you to some of the key databases that you can use to do a literature search and where you can find help, if you get stuck.

Nursing Databases

British Nursing Index (BNI)
The British Nursing Index (BNI) is a bibliographic database that indexes articles from the most popular English language nursing journals published primarily in the UK. BNI is a comprehensive index covering all aspects of nursing, midwifery and community healthcare from 1985 to the present, and is updated monthly.

An NHS Open Athens account is required to access - register or login

CINAHL
The Cinahl® database is a comprehensive and authoritative source of information for nurses, allied health professionals, and others interested in health care.

Other databases

Cochrane Library This link opens in a new window
The Cochrane Library is a collection of six databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making. It includes the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews the leading resource for systematic reviews in health care.
No password required

EMBASE - Athens account required
The Excerpta Medica database (EMBASE) produced by Elsevier, is a major biomedical and pharmaceutical database indexing over 3,500 international journals in the following fields: drug research, pharmacology, pharmaceutics, toxicology, clinical and experimental human medicine, health policy and management, public health, occupational health, environmental health, drug dependence and abuse, psychiatry. There is selective coverage for nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, psychology, and alternative medicine
HMIC - Athens account required
The Health Management Information Consortium (HMIC) database is a compilation of data from two sources, the Department of Health's Library and Information Services and King's Fund Information and Library Service.

It is useful for finding information relating to government white papers, quality and clinical governance issues
MEDLINE - Athens account required
Medline is a general medical database produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (hereafter, NLM). The database contains millions of citations, derived from thousands of biomedical and life science journals.

Broadly, the subject areas covered are:

- Allied health specialties
- Dentistry
- Nursing
- Medicine
- Pre-clinical sciences
- Some topics within veterinary medicine
Knowledge Hub
PsycINFO - Athens account required
PsycINFO provides access to international literature in psychology and related disciplines. Unrivaled in its depth of psychological coverage and respected worldwide for its high quality, the database is enriched with literature from an array of disciplines related to psychology such as psychiatry, education, business, medicine, nursing, pharmacology, law, linguistics, and social work.
TRIP
Trip is a clinical search engine designed to allow users to quickly and easily find and use high-quality research evidence to support their practice and/or care.

As well as research evidence we also allow clinicians to search across other content types including images, videos, patient information leaflets, educational courses and news.

See what journals you can access for your specialty

The library has produced a number of subject guides that highlight key books and journals for various healthcare specialties.

Visit the library website to see the full list of subject guides available

Find a Journal

My Journals is a good place to start when checking if the journal you need is available online with your NHS Open Athens account

Journals A-Z search
Search by title or by subject

Revalidation - CPD resources: Searching for articles