School of Nursing Resources

DNP Resources

Background vs. Foreground Questions

Background vs. Foreground Questions
Slides covering background and foreground questions

Point-of-Care Resources (Answering Background Questions)

Search the Library's catalog for textbooks or use point-of-care resources to answer background questions.

UpToDate This link opens in a new window
A physician authored clinical decision support resource with synthesized evidence ideal for point-of-care decisions. Compiles the most recent information to support its evidence-based recommendations.
Lippincott's Nursing Procedures and Skills This link opens in a new window
Contains almost 1,300 current, evidence-based procedures in all major clinical categories. It provides detailed descriptions of procedures that allows users to identify the procedure they need quickly and easily. Complete instructions, preparation guidelines, implementation steps, special considerations, and references are included in each entry.

Essential Evidence Plus
Consists of 8 separate databases that provide new research information, basic drug information, evidence-based clinical guidelines, and clinical decision-making tools.

ClinicalKey This link opens in a new window
This medical search engine works a little like Google. It includes medical and surgical reference books, access to journals/articles, procedural content and videos, point-of-care summaries, drug info, and access to MEDLINE. Includes images and videos too.
Cochrane Library This link opens in a new window
A collection of databases that contain high-quality, independent evidence to support healthcare decision making. Includes full-text access to the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, as well as the full-records from DARE, Health Technology Assessment Database (HTA), and NHS Economic Evaluation Database (NHS EED).
Access Medicine This link opens in a new window
Over 85 leading medical textbooks, including among others, Harrison's Online, Current Medical Diagnosis & Treatment, Hurst's the Heart, Williams Obstetrics, Schwartz’s Principles of Surgery. Drug Monographs. Multimedia examination & procedural videos. Study Tools including Flash Cards and Review Questions
Unlimited simultaneous users.
Lexicomp Online This link opens in a new window
Provides point-of-care drug information, including dosing, administration, interactions, toxicology, warnings and precautions, pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, pharmacogenomics, and more. Generic or product name searches link to additional information, including AHFS Essentials, AHFS DI, Martindale, Facts and Comparisons A to Z Drugs, as well as information for pediatric and geriatric populations. Also provides links to the UVA Health System Formulary, the Formulary Monograph Service, and Trissel's IV Compatibility.
Virgo This link opens in a new window
Search our Library catalog for access to textbooks (many e-Books) and other resources.

Databases (Answering Foreground Questions)

Use these databases to perform literature searches and find articles.

PubMed This link opens in a new window
Provides access to over 30 million citations for the biomedical literature from MEDLINE, online books, selected publishers, and the PubMed Central repository.
CINAHL This link opens in a new window
Provides citations and selected full text for the top nursing and allied health literature available and covers a wide range of topics including nursing, biomedicine, alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health and 17 allied health disciplines.
Web of Science (WoS) This link opens in a new window
Broad inter-disciplinary search including medicine, life sciences, social sciences, and more. Searches journal literature and conference proceedings. Also used to determine citation data (e.g. times cited) for journal articles.
PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
Database covers the professional and academic literature in psychology and related disciplines such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, and linguistics. Updated monthly.
OVID Medline This link opens in a new window
Provides access to over 28 million citations for the biomedical literature, covering biomedical research, clinical medicine, nursing, allied health, and health policy. Includes In-Process & Other Non-Indexed Citations.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Find articles from most online scholarly journals plus some books and Web sites.
Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
For topics reaching outside of nursing and healthcare.
Embase
Embase is a biomedical database that focuses on drugs and pharmacology, medical devices, clinical medicine, and basic science relevant to clinical medicine. It provides access to bibliographic citations to more than 8,500 biomedical journal articles from over 95 countries. It also contains over 2.4 million conference abstracts indexed from more than 7,000 conferences dating from 2009 to the present, and full-text indexing of drug, disease, and medical device data. It has especially strong coverage on drug trials. Over 1.5 million records are added yearly, with an average of over 6,000 each day.
Scopus
Scopus is an abstract and citation database that indexes content from more than 25,000 active titles and 7,000 publishers—all rigorously vetted and selected by an independent review board.

List of All Databases

Other Resources

e-Journals
Search a complete list of all our journals. If you have a citation, use this link to find full-text.
e-Books
Search our books; read online and download PDFs.
Merck Manual
Libra
Libra is the University of Virginia’s open access institutional repository, the online archive of scholarship created by the University community. It provides a central, stable location for the scholarly output of the University community (journal articles, datasets, theses/dissertations, etc.).

Levels of Evidence

The levels of evidence pyramid provides a way to visualize both the quality of evidence and the amount of evidence available. Evidence is broken down into three categories: Critical Appraisal (filtered), Experimental & Observational Studies (unfiltered), and Background Information. As you go down the pyramid, the amount of evidence increases as the quality of the evidence decreases.

Citation Management - Zotero

Download Zotero and the Zotero connector for your web browser, then use the instructions below to customize your settings by opening preferences in menu bar under Zotero in Mac and Edit in PC.

To connect Zotero with UVA ejournals, click on custom, select North America, and then University of Virginia.

Suggested Zotero Preferences

Zotero Quick Start Guide
Zotero support guide to getting started
Basic Zotero Usage and Troubleshooting
Issues with Zotero? Zotero's usage and troubleshooting guide may have an answer to your problem.
Use Zotero groups to share and collaborate with others

Covidence

Covidence is officially here! Click here to sign up for access via our institutional account.

Covidence is a user-friendly review management system that streamlines review processes. Whether you’re doing a literature review or undertaking a systematic review, Covidence can help and we’ll be glad to support you through the process.

Covidence 101
Slide deck introducing Covidence: registration, importing citations, and title/abstract screening

Covidence Support
Getting Started with Covidence
'Covidence 101': Series of brief videos to get you started
Main Steps of Covidence
'Covidence 102': Series of brief videos that walks you through the main steps of using Covidence for your review