LibGuides: Health Law & Leadership of Healthcare Organizations Program: Databases

Choose a Database

There are many databases to use and depending upon your topic, you may need more than one database to adequately cover your topic. The most likely one you will use is PubMed.

PubMed
Covers over 5,600 journals in the biomedical and health sciences, and has over 26 million citations with an archive of articles going back to the late 1940's. See UC San Diego Libraries PubMed page for more details.

Other databases to try will help expand your results so that it encompasses different aspects of your topic, such as: financial aspects, allied health topics, education-related topics, and more.

Business Source Complete
For any and all questions dealing with financial or economic topics. Dates of coverage vary, some journals back to early 20th century. Scholarly journals are not the only item there, it also includes: journal and magazine articles, books, industry reports, company profiles, SWOT analysis, and much more
CINAHL
The Cumulative Index for Nursing & Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) has articles back to 1937 and covers over 1000 journals in nursing and the allied health sciences, including physical therapy, and public health. It has a strong outcomes based focused (from the nursing field). A great resource including a variety of materials, not just journal articles
Cochrane Library
A great collection of evidence-based resources including:
- Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
- Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (Abstracts only)
- Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials
- Cochrane Methodology Register (Methods Studies)
- Health Technology Assessment Database (Technology Assessments)
- NHS Economic Evaluation Database (Economic Evaluation)
Compendex
Covers journals and conference proceedings in engineering, including biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, materials science, environmental science and nanotechnology. Great if you need to know the technology behind something like the halter monitor or what else might be in development.
Embase
Embase database covers around 3,500 journals from 100 countries, Subjects covered include all disciplines of medicine and biomedical science with particular strengths in the fields of drug research, pharmacology and toxicology. It also includes substantial coverage of Allied Health subjects. A key resource for systematic reviews, particularly ones involving drug therapy.
ERIC (Education Resources Information Center)
"Educational Resources Information Center" is a database sponsored by the U.S. Dept of Education to provide access to educational-related literature from all disciplines.
Inspec
Indexes journals and conference proceedings in biomedical engineering, engineering, computer science, and many other fields. Great if you need to know the technology behind something like the halter monitor or what else might be in development.
PsycINFO
For psychiatry or psychology topics as well as the psychological aspects of health and medicine.
Web of Science
A great cross-disciplinary database that has 12,000+ journals in all subjects, with a heavy emphasis in the sciences. There is some overlap with PubMed content, but there are also unique items here, too. For each record, you can view what the authors cited and who has since cited the article.
Google Scholar
A cross-disciplinary database but it indexes the full-text of the article which makes it great for finding information not typically searchable in other databases. It has very few tools for refining your search, so it is good to search this one last.

Be sure to try out the Advanced Search page. Also, try limiting a word or phrase to just the title to narrow your results.

Public Health Resources & Specialty Search Tools

APHA Policy Statement Database
Policy Statements beginning in 1948 to the present are available in our Policy Statement Database. You can search the database by year, policy number or keyword below.
Health Services Research (HSR) PubMed Queries
This page provides specialized PubMed searches on healthcare quality and costs including Appropriateness, Process Assessment, Outcomes Assessment, Costs, Economics, Qualitative Research Studies, and Quality Improvement Studies.
AHRQ: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Look under AHRQ for You for the links available for either Researchers or Policy Makers to find:
-- Research Findings
-- Knowledge Transfer & Implementation
-- AHRQ Annual Highlights
-- Budget
-- and more.
PAIS International
The PAIS International database contains continually updated records for over half a million journal articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, research reports, conference papers, web content, and more, on public affairs and policy from 1972+. Coverage includes conservation, energy resources, marine policy, coastal zone development, etc. and newly available the PAIS Archive, a retrospective conversion of the PAIS Annual Cumulated Bulletin, published 1915-1976.

Where Else to Search?

For the more bioengineering or biotechnology type of search, try:

ACM Digital Library & Guide to the Computing Literature
It includes bibliographic information, abstracts, and full text of works published by the Association for Computing Machinery. The Guide to the Computing Literature indexes journal articles and conference proceedings from additional societies and commercial publishers including IEEE, Springer, Elsevier, SIAM, Usenix, etc., making this database the first choice for computer research.
Compendex
Covers journals and conference proceedings in engineering, including biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, materials science, environmental science and nanotechnology. Great if you need to know the technology behind something like the halter monitor or what else might be in development.
Inspec
Indexes journals and conference proceedings in biomedical engineering, engineering, computer science, and many other fields. Great if you need to know the technology behind something like the halter monitor or what else might be in development.
Search for Patents
Two databases you could use.