Databases allow a user to access and search all the information housed in one place, and RCSI offers a high quality collection of medical databases. Explore the A-Z Resources which indexes these databases, and other clinical practice resources. You will have access to all major peer reviewed journal sources on healthcare, providing:
We also provide step-by-step guidance on each database so you can use them effectively. Explore the guidance for each database below, which includes printable material, and video tutorials.
Produced by the American Psychological Association, APA PsycInfo provides access to abstracts and summaries of literature in the fields of behavioural and social sciences. Refer to the PDF guide below for search tips.
You can watch a webinar from APA publishing on searching the APA Psych Info database.
CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health) includes almost 4 million records from more than 3000 journals in nursing, consumer health, complementary medicine and 17 allied health disciplines. Full text is available from 760 journals from 1937.
An instructional video on how to find and access CINAHL Plus with Full Text is available here.
You can view a training video on searching CINAHL Plus with Full Text below.
The Cochrane Library is a specialist resource that provides high-quality, evidence-based information for nursing and health professions.
Globally, the Cochrane Collaboration expert groups evaluate and synthesize evidence on clinical topics and publish systematic and other reviews. The Cochrane Library contains the complete reviews and a database of clinical trial reports, and is an important tool for discovering emerging clinical evidence. A user can access a collection of handbooks that guide and support you in conducting a Cochrane Review by clicking on the link below.
Embase is a Medicine and Pharmacy database. It is an essential resource to search when you are writing a systematic review, scoping review, thesis, or journal article for publication. The Advanced Search allows you to search for keywords and subject headings (called Emtree) that can improve search results. You can learn more about subject headings here.
Embase contains Medline content within it, so if you have already searched Medline, you can exclude that content from your results list by adding this code to the end of your search string: NOT [medline]/lim. Alternatively, you can click on the Sources filter on the results page, and click on the Embase portion of the venn diagram and click on Apply.
The library provides 1:1 tutorials on searching Embase which can be booked on our Clinical Query Service Online Form here.
A training video on searching Embase is available below.
Emerald is a publisher who focus on business and management topics: You can search Emerald Insight to find content covering finance, economics, education, social care and management, including specialist areas such as operations, logistics and property.
You can also view a video library of instructional content from the vendor by clicking on the link below. There is also a detailed user guide from Emerald Publishing.
Easy to follow video demonstrations take you through key areas of platform functionality.
ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) is a widely used index to educational-related literature.
Global Health is specialist abstracting and indexing database focusing on public health. It contains over 3 million scientific records from 1973 to the present, derived from over 7,300 journals, reports, books and conferences. It has a growing number of full text articles (over 90,000) from journals, conferences, and reports. You can access the Ovid Learning and Training Resources page here.
There is also a training video here that goes through Basic and Advanced Searches.
Health Business Elite provides content on all aspects of healthcare administration and other non-clinical aspects of healthcare institution management. A user can access training resources here including printable material.
A webinar on how to search the database.
The Medline database is generally recognized as the premier source for bibliographic and abstract coverage of biomedical literature. Widely used by students, researchers and clinicians, the data from the US National Library of Medicine (NLM) is available in various versions. Medline records appear in many databases but RCSI Library offers three versions: via PubMed, Ovid and Ebsco. PubMed is the NLM version and it is globally available and free to all. Each version enables optimum searching and results but access, features and interfaces differ, as summarised below.
| Medline Platform | Features |
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| EBSCOhost |
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Training videos on Medline are available below.
Scopus is a large multidisciplinary abstract and citation database. It also includes the full Medline database.
Web of Science is a large general index which includes all the biomedical sciences but it has an important subfile ‘Social Sciences Index.’ This indexes journals in health services, public administration, business, economics, environment, management, education, finance, law, social policy and interdisciplinary studies. It includes the specialist feature citation indexing to enable you to find all publications citing one research article.
View a recorded webinar on using the database here or a step by step search guide here.