NURS 250 - Teschendorf

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

NURS 250 - Teschendorf
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Researching Health Sciences Topics

Starting your Research

You may want to start off by gathering background information from encyclopedias and other reference books. Consider using:

Stat!Ref: This database searches the contents of many medical reference books.
Ebrary is a collection of many online books that may prove to be helpful. For more information on how to use Ebrary, click here.
Electronic Reference Resources: This is a collection of online reference books (mostly encyclopedias).

Health & Medical encyclopedias and handbooks

After gathering background information on your topic, you will want to focus your search in general and research databases to find articles on your topic. When doing research from off-campus, you will need to log-on to use databases and other online resources licensed by FSU. Simply use your MyFSU username and password to log-on. For more information on off-campus database access, click here.

FLITE Databases

Stat!Ref
As stated above, Stat!Ref is an excellent starting point for researching medical topics. Enter your search term into the search box and you will obtain a rank-ordered list of results taken from various medical encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, and other medical reference books. A very helpful feature of this database is the Related Concepts box to the left of the results that will provide you with synonyms for your topic. These related concepts or synonyms can be used to enhance your searches in this database, as well as the other databases.

Click here for a Stat!Ref Database Guide.

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 on various topics. When you have found your subject heading, you may click on it to break your topic down by subdivision. Click on the refine search tab to add limits such as peer-reviewed or publication date limits. You can narrow and expand your search using the options available in this database.

Click here for a CINAHL Database Guide.

PubMed
This is the largest biomedical database, with over 16 million citations. Search using keywords and then limit your search if necessary using the limits tab, related articles link, or selecting the Review tab to see only review articles. Another highly useful resource linked from PubMed is Consumer Health, also called Medline Plus that provides reliable information oriented towards patients.

Click here for a PubMed Database Guide.

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 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.

Click here for a General Onefile Database Guide.

Health & Wellness Resource Center
Find information from medical encyclopedias, journal articles, pamphlets, videos, and more using this database that is filled with information oriented towards health care consumers. This is a nice place to get a general overview of different diseases and conditions, as well as medications.

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.

Great Government Websites for Information on Community Health/Epidemiology
***Note: don't forget all of the useful government information linked from PubMed

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
US Department of Health and Human Services
SmallStep
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)
Healthier US
National Center for Health Statistics
State Health Facts- Not a government website, but good source for state level info. and health care policies