Once you’ve formulated an answerable search question and thought about the techniques you will use to help you get a manageable set of relevant results, you can move on to consider where you might find evidence to answer your question.
This section will guide you through applying a search across key resources providing summaries of research evidence. These have been selected as they will help you to identify high levels of evidence to inform your research.
There are many other databases you may like to consider searching as part of your research. It is important that you consider a range of sources in the search process as you are unlikely to find the information you need on one source alone. Details of all of the databases you can access are available through the A-Z databases list. Filter by your subject to limit to the key resources in your discipline.
NICE Evidence is a search engine which allows you to search for guidelines, health technology assessments and economic evaluations. This video introduces a range of evidence-based resources from NICE including NICE Guidelines, the BNF and BNFC.
TRIP database is a clinical search engine, that has been designed to help you find evidence-based content quickly. TRIP will help you identify research evidence, as well as images, videos and patient information leaflets.
TRIP also has a PICO search mode, which you can use to help find evidence quickly for your clinical scenario. Watch the video below for an example of how this works.
CINAHL is a database that provides access to details of published literature across the fields of nursing, community healthcare and midwifery. As well as searching across a range of journal articles, conference papers and book chapters, you can access and download evidence-based care sheets to help support evidence -based practice. The university has access to a large number of journals indexed in CINAHL, however it's worth noting not all content will be available in full-text.
In activity four, you'll have an opportunity to learn more about searching CINAHL for your research.
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