HCSA 202 - Skrocki

Ferris State University Library for Information, Technology and Education (FLITE).

HCSA 202 - Skrocki
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	Finding Medical-Legal Journal Articles

FLITE Databases

To find medical-legal information and other medical research articles, it is essential to use the appropriate databases that provide access to many citations and full-text articles. If you are doing research from off-campus, you will need to log-on to use databases licensed by FSU. Click here for information on off-campus database access.

CINAHL
The Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL) currently gathers information from more than 1800 journals. Use the CINAHL Headings subtab to get more subject-specific information for your research topic. Once you have performed a search using the CINAHL Headings subtab, you can select the Refine Search tab and apply the Publication Type limit of "Legal Cases." If performing a Basic Search or Advanced Search using keywords, you can narrow and expand your search using the numerous options available in this database.

Click here for a CINAHL Database Guide.

General OneFile
This is a general database that will be useful for searching many subject areas. Health Reference Center is a subset of General OneFile and operates in the same manner as General OneFile. For both General OneFile and Health Reference Center, the default search is a subject guide search. In the subject guide search you can only search one term at a time. If you are having difficulties finding the proper subject term, switch to the Basic Search or Advanced Search and perform a keyword search, then select a pertinent article to find the proper subject heading. Also use the Basic Search or Advanced Search if combining search terms. In the Advanced Search you can limit your articles to particular journals, full-text, peer-reviewed, etc.

PubMed
This is the largest biomedical database, with over 16 million citations. Try to use specific keywords rather than broad keywords to obtain information pertinent to your topic. If retrieving an overwhelming number of articles, use various options to limit your search that were shown to you in class.

Click here for a PubMed Database Guide.

Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe
Using this database, under Academic Search Forms you can opt to specifically search Medical sources or Legal Research. Options under Medical resources include Medical News or Medical Journals. Note that the number of medical journals indexed is small compared to other databases, so you may wish to search medical news to obtain current information from various newspapers, but keep in mind that these will not be scholarly, peer-reviewed articles. If using the Legal Research option, select either Legal News or Law Reviews. Lexis-Nexis defaults to searching the last 6 months, so be sure to change the time period if you prefer to search a broader date range.

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.

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.