Nursing Research Guide
- Find Background Info
- Find Books
- Find Articles
- Citing Sources
Find Background Info
Background sources, such as specialized encyclopedias and dictionaries, are an essential piece of the research process. They can help you:
- Gather information about your topic and understand the scope of the research
- Locate reliable sources and clarify keywords
- Pinpoint important authors, texts, ideas, and keywords about the research area. Knowing what the primary phrases and concepts are will help you a lot as you are searching through library databases and online sources.
Health and Medicine (Gale)
Health and Medicine includes numerous journals and magazines, many of which are full text. It contains nursing and allied health journals, other medical journals, newsletters, and consumer health magazines. Use the Topic Finder to find relevant search terms and subtopics.
Search Health and Medicine (Gale)
Davis's Drug Guide (18th edition)
Davis's Drug Guide delivers up-to-date, comprehensive, and practical information on over 5,000 trade name and generic drugs. This powerful resource contains everything you need to provide premium care to your patients including information on dosing and administration, safety, interactions, patient teaching, and much more.
Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary
Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary contains detailed definitions for more than 65,000 medical terms.
Search Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary
Credo Reference
Credo Reference is a multi-publisher collection of high-quality reference titles covering everything from the arts to astronomy, law to literature, and science to Shakespeare. Available titles also include a range of multimedia options including thousands of high-quality diagrams, photographs, maps, and audio files.
Find Books
Print and e-books are valuable sources for academic research. They will help you to gain an overview of your topic and often contain in-depth information about the scholarship or history of research on a subject. Some books are written by single authors, while others include essays or chapters by multiple scholars within a discipline. Don’t let the length of books intimidate you because you don’t need to read them from cover to cover. Look at the table of contents and index to find the sections that are relevant to your work.
Find Books Using GriffinSearch
GriffinSearch is a good starting place if you are looking for books, journal articles, films, and other materials available in the library. In addition to searching the Giovale Library catalog for physical materials, GriffinSearch finds e-books and articles from several of our databases. To get started, search by keyword or type in the title of a book here:
WorldCat
WorldCat lets you search for books, articles, videos, and other material that are available in libraries worldwide. If you are doing in-depth research on a topic and are considering requesting resources through Interlibrary Loan, WorldCat can help you discover resources that might not be in the Giovale Library collection.
Interlibrary Loan (ILL)
Interlibrary Loan is a service where patrons of one library can borrow books and other materials, and access journal articles that are owned by another library.
Explore Interlibrary Loan Materials
Utah Academic Library Consortium
Giovale Library participates in the Utah Academic Library Consortium (UALC) and Westminster University students have reciprocal circulation privileges at UALC partner libraries. Each UALC library has different circulation policies, but all require a current, valid, legal photo identification and proof of current enrollment at Westminster. Some libraries may also require other verification methods, so it is recommended that you contact the library you are interested in for details.
Popular Titles and Featured Texts
Nursing and Midwifery Research: Methods and Appraisal for Evidence-Based Practice
Ethical Case Studies for Advanced Practice Nurses: Solving Dilemmas in Everyday Practice
Next Generation NCLEX-RN Prep 2023-2024: Practice Tests + Proven Strategies
Johns Hopkins Evidence-Based Practice for Nurses and Healthcare Professionals
Browse the Print Collection
The Giovale Library uses the Library of Congress Classification system, which divides collections into 21 basic classes using single letters of the alphabet. These classes also hold subclasses which allows the library to implement more specific classes to make it easier for patrons to find materials. Medicine books can be found under the broad classification R. However, medicine is fairly broad so to narrow the collection to specifically nursing materials, we use the sub-classification RT. These books can be found on the north end of the top floor of the library.
Find Articles
The Giovale Library provides access to a number of subject databases that you can use to find journal articles on topics within a specific discipline or field of study. The databases listed on this page are the most useful for finding research published in nursing.
CINAHL – Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (EBSCO)
Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) provides full text for the top nursing and allied health literature available and covers a wide range of topics including nursing, biomedicine, health sciences librarianship, alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health, and allied health disciplines. This full-text resource features publications from the National League for Nursing and the American Nurses Association. In addition, it provides access to health care books, nursing dissertations, selected conference proceedings, standards of practice, audiovisuals, book chapters, and more.
PubMed
PubMed is the NLM's premier bibliographic database covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and the preclinical sciences. PubMed contains bibliographic citations and author abstracts from biomedical journals published in the United States and 70 other countries. Coverage is worldwide, but most records are from English-language sources or have English abstracts.
Cochrane Library (Wiley)
The Cochrane Library is a collection of databases that contain high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making. It includes the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR), the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE), the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), the Cochrane Database of Methodology Reviews (CDMR), the NHS Economic Evaluation Database (NHS EED), the Health Technology Assessment Database (HTA), and the Cochrane Methodology Register (CMR).
Search Cochrane Library (Wiley)
Nursing and Allied Health Database (ProQuest)
Nursing and Allied Health provides comprehensive and multimedia coverage of the fields of nursing and allied health, as well as alternative and complementary medicine. It contains a diverse mix of scholarly literature, reference materials, evidence-based resources, dissertations, and systematic reviews.
Search Nursing & Allied Health Database (ProQuest)
Science Direct (Elsevier)
ScienceDirect is a leading full-text scientific database offering journal articles and book chapters. Journals are guided by eminent editorial boards and articles are rigorously peer-reviewed. Books on ScienceDirect cover 24 subject collections across disciplines such as biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology, chemistry, clinical medicine, engineering, and environmental science.
Search ScienceDirect (Elsevier)
GriffinSearch
GriffinSearch is a good starting place if you are looking for books, journal articles, films, and other material available in the library. In addition to searching the Giovale Library catalog for physical materials, GriffinSearch finds e-books and articles from several of our databases.
Citing Sources
Citation Resources
Properly citing your sources shows that you’ve done research to become knowledgeable about your topic and helps you avoid plagiarism. Explore citation resources to learn how to correctly cite sources based on style.
Need help with your research?
Get in touch with:
Katherine Paterson
Liaison Librarian for Nursing
801.832.2258
kpaterson@westminsteru.edu
Librarians are happy to answer questions via email, phone, or in-person.
Contact Katherine with a question or to schedule a research help appointment.
Faculty: Contact Katherine to suggest edits to this research guide.