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Midwifery: Databases and websites

Databases provided through Birmingham City University Libraries

Databases enable you to access journal articles, technical reports, professional guidance and information to support your studies.

Search or browse All4Maternity for information on childbirth, midwifery and pregnancy. Includes access to blogs, eLearning modules, podcasts and the journals Practising Midwife and the Student Midwife. PLEASE NOTE YOU MUST REGISTER FOR ACCESS BEFORE VISITING DATABASE.  REGISTRATION CODE AVAILABLE HERE

  • AMED - The Allied and Complementary Medicine Database

    This alternative medicine database is designed for physicians, therapists, medical researchers and clinicians looking to learn more about alternative treatments 
  • Campbell Collaboration
    Very similar to the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews but with a focus on social, behavioural and educational interventions. Talking therapies are covered extensively.
  • Childlink.co.uk
    One stop source of information on legislation, policies and practices concerning children, young people, families and adult safeguarding.
  • Clinical Trials
    Current information about clinical research studies from the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
  • EThOS (Electronic Theses Online Service)
    Search across 250,000+ theses for free and order full text from the British Library.
  • EU Clinical Trials Register
  • Lexis Library
    Reported and unreported UK legal cases. Complete UK Acts and Statutory Instruments.(also UK Legal journals and case law).
  • Maternity and Infant Care
    Coverage of the midwifery profession, pregnancy, labour, birth, postnatal care, neonatal care and the first year of life. Includes MIDIRS. PLEASE NOTE WE HAVE ONLY A LICENCE FOR 2 PEOPLE TO ACCESS THIS AT ANY ONE TIME,SO YOU MAY BE ASKED TO WAIT AND ACCESS LATER.
  • Nutrition and Food Sciences Database
    Nutrition and Food Sciences Database gathers together research, reviews and news on nutrition and the food sciences in an easily searchable database. It covers the whole food chain from the raw ingredients to the physiological and health effects of nutrients. Key subject areas include public health, clinical nutrition, nutrition physiology, food safety, food security, consumer behaviour, food science and technology and food product groups such as functional foods.
  • ScienceDirect Freedom Collection
    The Science Direct Freedom Collection comprises over 2000 Elsevier (publisher) titles many of which are available full-text. Not all of these titles are indexed in the databases listed under the tabs for each field.
  • SPORTDiscus with Full Text
    This full text database is the premier source of literature for sports and sports medicine journals, providing full-text content from many well-known and respected sources. It is an essential tool for health professionals, researchers and students, providing extensive coverage in the areas of fitness, health and sport studies.
  • TRIP
    Trip is a clinical search engine designed to allow users to quickly and easily find and use high-quality research evidence to support their practice and/or care. It offers both advanced and PICO search options. PLEASE NOTE we only have access to the standard search function, not the 'Advanced' or 'Recent' options which are only available to subscribers.
  • Westlaw UK
    Includes legal journals, statutes, a case locator service, and the full Law Reports service from 1865.
  • PROSPERO  International prospective register of systematic reviews

Video Guides (and other TIPS)

If you want advice on using the databases, help with search techniques or choice of databases for your topic contact the Mary Seacole Library Liaison Team who are happy to arrange one-to-one and small group tutorials, or use the Library online help available at Library Help. Further information on support offered by Library and Learning Resources can be found under the Help Me! tab.

Video guides to using the databases and finding the full text of papers can be found in the tabs in this box.
TIPS guides (in Word or pdf)    

 

Many of the journal indexing databases do not provide access to all of their indexed content. Library and Learning Resources subscribes to many journal titles which, though indexed by the databases, do not have the full text linked directly from the database. To make sure that you are able to link to all of the available titles and obtain the full text when they are not, prepare for your search by doing the following:
Preparing for a database search. To check the availability of full text where it is not linked from the database, open additional tabs in the browser to A-Z of Full Text, Google and the Inter-Library Request Form. 
Finding the full text - From database to pdf. Some of the references found on a database will not have a full text link. By searching the A-Z journals list you can see if the university subscribes to the journal title and, if it does, follow the links to the full text.
Click here to see video Finding the full text - From database via Google. Some references you find in a database will not be available through the University. Always check Google to see if there is any open access. If this fails use the Article request form to ask us to get it for you.
Finding a journal paper from a reading list, a reference given in class or a published reference list.
Finding a journal paper from the title in CINAHL: How to find a journal paper when the title of the paper is known and you have been directed to find it in CINAHL.

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The following video guides demonstrate how to perform the various elements of a search on CINAHL. They have no soundtrack and none are longer than 60 seconds.
Link to YouTube Accessing CINAHL from iCity
Link to YouTube Entering the first search term
Link to YouTube Entering a second search term
Link to YouTube Combining search terms using AND
Link to YouTube Limiting a search to full text and journals published in the UK and Ireland
Link to YouTube Viewing the search results and full text
Link to YouTube Printing a search history (search strategy)

The Cochrane Library consists of a series of databases, all of which can be searched together.

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) consists of Cochrane Systematic Reviews and Protocols for Systematic Reviews. These are Open Access and Full Text.

Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE) consists of abstracts for systematic reviews that have been published in journals and by other organizations. Some of these may have links to Open Access full text.

Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CCRCT) consists of references (with abstracts) to published controlled trials found in journals by the Cochrane Review Teams. These are not full text and therefore would need to be checked against the University holdings

Link to YouTube Searching the Cochrane Library: The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR)
Link to YouTube Searching the Cochrane Library: The Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effect (DARE)
Link to YouTube Searching the Cochrane Library: The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CCRCT)
Link to YouTube Searching the Cochrane Library: Topic Searches
   
   
   
   

 

NHS Evidence is the main source for health and social care guidelines. It is managed by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and includes guidelines from, among others, NICE, SCIE, SIGN, and the HTA Programme as well as the NICE Clinical Knowledge Summaries on current evidence and the British National Formulary (BNF).

NHS Evidence is open access and most of the documents it will find are open full text. Below are two videos which demonstrate basic searches of the two key resources (Evidence Search and CKS).

The following video guides demonstrate how to search Social Care Online. They have no soundtrack.
Link to YouTube Doing a Basic Search
Link to YouTube Combining terms to narrow or focus a search using AND
Link to YouTube Using the filters to find research papers published in the UK
Link to YouTube Finding the full text of journal papers
In many of the databases it is possible to set up a personal account which you can then use to save search strategies, individual references and set up alerts. These accounts are not usually with the database but with the host provider. Thus it can be possible to have one account which works across multiple databases. For example: EBSCOhost supply us with CINAHL, Medline, PsycINFO, British Education Index, ERIC, Child Development & Adolescent Studies and GreenFILE. One account will work across all of these databases. 
Link to YouTube Setting up an account with EBSCOhost
Saving a Search History in EBSCOhost. How to save a search strategy for future use. This can help when you have limited time to review your results or are interupted.
Rerunning a saved Search History in EBSCOhost
Saving references in EBSCOhost. 
Creating Custom Folders in EBSCOhost. This can be a useful way of keeping track of your searches. Custom folders can be set for a topic or for a module. 
Using Custom Folders in EBSCOhost. How to save a reference into a particular custom folder.
Creating an Alert in EBSCOhost. Alerts are useful if you are liable to need regular updating. For longer projects, where the literature search takes place early on, Alerts are a way of making sure that you are aware of anything published after the initial phase is complete. 

TRiP (Turning Reseach into Practice) is a clinical search engine designed to allow users to quickly and easily find and use high-quality research evidence to support their practice and/or care.

TRiP provide a series of videos explaining how to get the most from the database. Click here to view the videos.

Useful Websites

There are also many useful webpages freely available on the internet - but remember that not all information on the web is reliable To help we have developed an Evaluating Webpages guide, with some basic steps to help you ensure that the information you use adds to the quality of your work

These are some webpages that will be useful in your studies. Links to professional bodies are shown in the Professional Development section of this guide

These resources are particularly useful for midwifery. If you can think of any others we should include, let us know!

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