Nursing Resources
School of Nursing Resources
DNP Resources
Getting Started
All good literature searches start with formulating a searchable question.
The citation manager Zotero will keep track of article references and other resource citations for your project.
UVA Library's Zotero Guide, their Zotero tutorial, and our HSL Zotero tips are all great places to start.
Covidence is a web-based review management application that will help streamline the screening and PRISMA flow diagram generation for your literature review. Be sure to sign up using this link to gain access to your institutional account with unlimited reviews.
Watch these short videos to get started:
Visit the Searching for and Appraising Evidence page for links to databases for your research, search tips, and database tutorials.
Review these tips for obtaining full-text PDFs of articles and access the library's subscription resources from off-grounds.
Looking for more information about PRISMA?
Databases (Answering Foreground Questions)
Use these databases to perform literature searches and find articles.
- PubMed This link opens in a new windowProvides 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 windowBroad 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 windowDatabase 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 windowProvides 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 windowFind articles from most online scholarly journals plus some books and Web sites.
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new windowFor 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.
Point-of-Care Resources
Point-of-care resources provide answers based on the best available evidence at your fingertips. These resources can also be useful to explore background questions on a topic.
- Access AnesthesiologyOffers a wealth of information to support education and clinical practice: eBooks, procedure videos, instructional animation, guidelines, quick references tools, and more.
- Access Medicine This link opens in a new windowOver 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. - 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 windowA 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).
- Essential Evidence Plus (Formerly InfoRetriever) This link opens in a new window
Consists of 8 separate databases that provide new research information, basic drug information, evidence-based clinical guidelines, and clinical decision-making tools.
- Lexicomp Online This link opens in a new windowProvides 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.
- Lippincott's Nursing Procedures and Skills This link opens in a new windowContains 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.
- Mental Measurements Yearbook This link opens in a new windowProvides users with a comprehensive guide to over 2,700 contemporary testing instruments. All MMY entries contain descriptive information (e.g., test purpose, publisher, pricing) and edited review(s) written by leading content area experts, covering educational skills, personality, vocational aptitude, psychology, and related areas as included in the printed Mental Measurements Yearbooks.
- UpToDate This link opens in a new windowA 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.
- VisualDxVisualDx is clinical decision support system software intended to be used by medical practitioners, including primary care practitioners, to assist them in differential diagnosis.
Davis's Drug Guide for Nurses by ISBN: 1719646406Publication Date: 2022-05-18Davis's Drug Guide for Nurses®, Eighteenth Edition delivers everything you need to administer medications safely across the lifespan--643 well-organized monographs encompassing hundreds of generic drugs and thousands of trade names. Its nursing-focused Cure & Care' approach explains what the drug does and describes what the nurse does and how the nursing process relates to the pharmacotherapeutics.
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.
Claude Moore Health Sciences Library 1350 Jefferson Park Avenue P.O. Box 800722 Charlottesville, VA 22908 (Directions)
Contact Us
Staff Directory
(434) 924-5444Feedback
© 2024 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia
Copyright & Privacy