In August we introduced you to Adele Miles, our Port Macquarie Campus Librarian. Today we have Adele back with us for a guest post, talking about one of her specialist areas: finding information for your nursing studies. Over to you Adele!
Tackling your first assessment task as a nursing student can be a daunting prospect – where do you find the information you need to come up with a thoroughly researched piece of work?
Start at the CSU Library Homepage, where you’ll find the Primo Search box – a great place to discover print books, eBooks and journal articles. If you haven’t used it before it’s a good idea to watch the Library’s online tutorial, Introducing Primo Search.
When you need very specific information about nursing check out our Library Guides – there’s a Nursing Library Guide and a Midwifery Library Guide, with links to nursing books, online reference material, journal databases, relevant web resources and more.
Finding journal articles
You’ll quickly realise that good essays require references to peer-reviewed journal articles – in fact some assessment tasks will specify that they be included in your response. The best place to find the articles you need is to search in journal databases. It takes some practice to use these databases effectively, so best to get started now – check our online tutorials, How to use Journal Databases, and you can always Ask a Librarian.
Here’s a selection of databases that include nursing articles (you will need to log in with your CSU username and password to access these):
- CINAHL Plus with Full-Text – A very comprehensive index of nursing and allied health journals, most with the full text of articles attached.
- Informit Health Collection – An Australasian health information database which includes some books, conference proceedings and reports as well as journal articles. Useful for when you need Australian material.
- Medline – Produced by the National Library of Medicine in the US, this is a huge database including indexes to around 5600 biomedicine, allied health, nursing and healthcare journals.
Medicines and Drug Information
You may need to find out some information on pharmaceuticals or drug therapy for various conditions. Here’s some useful resources to try:
- Australian Medicines Handbook (AMH) – an online resource providing information about most of the therapeutic drugs marketed in Australia. Updated twice a year.
- MIMS Online – Contains a wide range of Australian medicines information, fully searchable and regularly updated.
- eTG Complete (Therapeutic Guidelines) – therapeutic information for Australian health practitioners, covering all common disorders.
Multimedia Resources
Videos and interactive multimedia sites are useful for building your knowledge base when you need a change from all that reading:
- Nursing Education in Video – This is a series of over 400 videos on nursing, listed by subject and with handy, searchable transcripts.
- Primal Pictures Anatomy TV: – Have some fun with these great 3D animations showing more than 6500 body structures. You can look at different layers of anatomical regions and rotate them around. There’s also text about each structure and some videos. It’s well set up for iPad.
- Primal Pictures Anatomy & Physiology: This site provides learning modules on different body systems including interactive models, case studies and quizzes – it would be very helpful for exam revision.
Websites
Take care when using websites in your academic work. Check the Library’s online tutorial, Evaluating Internet Sources to make sure you’re on the right track.
Here is a selection of sites you might find useful for your nursing studies:
- Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) – An Australian Government organisation which publishes a plethora of statistical and reporting information on all aspects of Australian health.
- Australian College of Nursing – Australia’s peak professional nursing organisation.
- Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet – At Edith Cowan University, “Helping to ‘close the gap’ by providing the evidence base to inform practice and policy in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health”.
- CareSearch – Funded by the Australian Government, this site provides information and resources about palliative care.
- Australian Health Map – From the ABC. Includes a state-by-state guide to health resources, statistics and information.
- HealthStats NSW – Data and statistics about the health of the NSW population – includes health inequalities and the major causes of disease and injury.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) – Mainly population data, but provides some useful reports, such as Causes of Death.
- World Health Organisation (WHO) – Reports on global health issues. Includes World Health Statistics publications.
Thanks, Adele! Good luck to all our new Nursing Students as they embark on their studies. And don’t forget: If you need help finding resources you can Ask a Librarian!