NURS 500 - ADVANCED ROLES IN PROFESSIONAL NURSING PRACTICE
Staying Current on Issues and Trends for Advanced Nursing Practice
In order to stay current on issues and trends for Advanced Practice Nursing, recent articles and news from relevant associations should be consulted. Recent articles can be found by searching databases, discussed later on this webpage. Some key association news releases to consult include:
- American Nurses Association (ANA) News APRNS Can Use.
- National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists (NACNS) News.
- American Association of Nurse Anesthetists In the News.
- American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) News Releases.
- American College of Nurse Practitioners (ACNP) News.
- ANA's APRN Consensus Model Toolkit: Not so much a news source, but good information available about APRN credentialing/scope of practice.
Finding Library Materials
The snapshot of the Library Homepage below highlights the Find menu which is a good starting point to find various library resources, such as books, articles, journals, subject guides, etc.
Starting your Research
Great places to look for background information include:
- Books: Try a keyword search to find books on your topic . Some particularly interesting books include:
- Advanced practice nursing : essential knowledge for the profession
- Primary care : the art and science of advanced practice nursing
- Stat!Ref: The "Electronic Medical Library" allows you to cross-search many medical reference books at the same time
- Access Medicine: Another database that allows you to search through multiple medical reference and textbooks at the same time
- Online Medical Encyclopedias
- Health and Wellness Resource Center: This database is largely designed for consumer health information, so provides many resources that are helpful for learning about health topics
Print Books
Finding Articles using FLITE Databases
When searching for articles, you will want to focus your search in general and research databases. For off-campus database access, you will need to log-on. Simply use your MyFSU username and password to log-on. For more information on off-campus database access, click here.
PubMed
This is the largest biomedical database, with over 20 million citations. Because the database is so large, you may want to use the Limits link to help narrow your search. In the Limits screen, consider using the Search Field Tags option to have your keywords found only in the Title. Make the Related Articles link your friend - it works very well for finding similar articles once you have found a relevant article.
Click here for a PubMed tutorial.
CINAHL
The Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL) currently gathers information from more than 1800 journals. Scroll down when your initial results screen pops up, and use the Subject: Major Heading selection from the left-hand side to narrow your results to the major subject selected.
General OneFile
This is a general database that will be useful for searching many subject areas. For General OneFile, the default search is a subject guide search. In the Find Subject search box, you can only search one term at a time, and then may want to click on the + to View Subdivisions. Nurse Practitioners is a subject with many records in this database, as is Nursing Education. If you would like to refine your search or are having difficulties finding the proper subject term, you can use the search box at the top of the screen in General Onefile to search by keyword, or consider switching to the Advanced Search. Also use the Advanced Search if combining search terms. In the Advanced Search you can limit your articles to particular journals, full-text, peer-reviewed, etc.
ERIC
The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) contains many articles with information relevant to nursing education. When using this database, consider clicking on the Advanced Search tab and entering "Nursing Education" (with the quotes) in the first search box, and changing the drop down menu from Keywords to Descriptors. You can then enter keywords in the boxes below the first line, and find articles pertaining to specific areas of interest in nursing education.
ABI/Inform Global
This business database is drawing information from many journals relevant to health care, especially as it relates to the business aspect of healthcare. Try running a search, and then look at the Suggested Topics box above your search results, and you may wish to narrow your results list by selecting one of the recommended topics.
Obtaining the Full-Text of Articles
In some databases you will see an option for a Text version of the document or a PDF version. In general, the PDF version is preferable as it is most often a scanned version of the original and will therefore contain the graphics. When e-mailing, printing, or saving a group of articles, be sure to select the full-text or PDF option if available.
Some databases contain little full-text, but allow you to link out to Ferris' holdings or the interlibrary loan request form. You will notice the Find it! links following individual citations that will indicate the availability of the article online, in the library, or the need to interlibrary loan the article. Click on the Go button and you will be taken to the online version, library holdings record, or interlibrary loan form to obtain the article you desire. See the example below:
Sample Journal Article Link-Out
Evaluating your Articles
Before requesting articles from interlibrary loan, please review the abstract and make sure that the article is on-topic. Also, please insure that the article is in a language that you speak, as some databases, such as PubMed index many non-English articles that have abstracts written in English. After you have evaluated the topical coverage and language of the article, please do not hesitate to request it through interlibrary loan if it is not available on campus.
Advanced Practice Nursing Journals
Some of the relevant journals to APNs or APRNs that are available through the library include:- Journal of Advanced Nursing
- Clinical Nurse Specialist
- Topics in Advanced Practice Nursing ejournal
- Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners
- Nurse Practitioner
- American Association of Nurse Anesthetists Journal
- Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health
Getting Library Help
Other Useful Library Links
- Library Homepage
- Find Articles: Look for articles using FLITE's databases.
- Find Journals: Look for journals by doing title searches.
- Find Books and More: Look for books, videos, and other library holdings.
- APA Citation Style Guide: Learn basics about APA style, a prevalent citation format in the medical field.
Any more questions? Contact: Alison (Ali) Konieczny / Email / Phone: 231-591-3696 / Office: FLITE 315
Don't forget, you are welcome to come to the Oval Information Desk and ask for help any time. You can also call us 231-591-3602 or chat with us.
Last update: Sept. 18, 2010