Databases
The NHS Wales e-Library for Health provides access to a wide range of databases to meet the needs of the diverse professions and specialties across NHS Wales. Medicines and therapies, health and social care, psychology, informatics, economics, business and law. Travel health, midwifery, dentistry, education, and much more.
If you are on-site and using the e-library from within the NHS Network, you shouldn't have to log-in with your OpenAthens account. If you are faced with a log-in screen but don't have an account you can self-register for an account.
Ageinfo database - a searchable bibliographic database of over 59,000 books articles and reports from the specialist collection on social gerontology held at the Centre for Policy on Ageing.
Please note that NHS Wales does not have an active subscription, and therefore only the free "simple" search function is available.
Content from Ageinfo is also added to our subscription database Social Policy and Practice. Registered eLibrary users may find the improved search features of Social Policy and Practice, as well the inclusion of content from other data providers (e.g. Social Care Online), helpful when conducting their searches.
Allied & Complementary Medicine ™ covers the fields of:
- Professions allied to medicine, including physiotherapy, occupational therapy, rehabilitation, speech and language therapy, and podiatry.
- Complementary medicine
- Palliative care
Produced by the Health Care Information Service of the British Library, information is geared toward medical professionals and health practitioners and care-givers, as well as the pharmaceutical industry. Journal articles, newspapers and books are indexed and coverage is international.
Coverage: 1985 – current
(NHS Wales Network) ASSIA
(NHS Wales OpenAthens) ASSIA
Applied Social Sciences Index & Abstracts (ASSIA) is designed to serve the information needs of the caring professions, including practitioners, researchers, and students in healthcare, social services, education, and related areas. It is focused on a core of around 500 of the most relevant English language scholarly journals covering aspects of health and social care from a broadly social scientific perspective.
Coverage: 1987 - current
Subject coverage
- Education
- Family
- Gerontology
- Health services
- Housing
- Mental health services
- Nursing
- Social work
- Substance abuse
(NHS Wales Network) British Nursing Database
(Log in with NHS Wales OpenAthens) British Nursing Index (BNI) with Full Text
British Nursing Database (BND) is a full-text version of the British Nursing Index (BNI), a leading bibliographic database supporting the practice, education, and research for nurses, midwives, and health providers in the UK and the greater nursing community. This full text database provides abstracting and indexing for hundreds of titles, with coverage dating back to 1993. Literature coverage focuses on titles published in the UK, Australia and Canada, plus a selection of important international nursing titles.
You have access to:
Subject coverage
- Biology-Genetics
- Dermatology and venerology
- Dietetics
- Drug abuse and alcoholism
- Forensic sciences
- Geriatrics
- Gerontology
- Law
- Neurology
- Nursing
Additional Information
Proquest LibGuide: British Nursing Index
Support for this idea from social and behavioural scientists and social practitioners led to the creation of The Campbell Collaboration in 2000. The inaugural meeting in Philadelphia, USA, attracted 85 participants from 13 countries.
CINAHL Plus® with Full Text is a robust collection of full text for nursing & allied health journals, providing full text for more than 770 journals indexed in CINAHL®. This authoritative file contains full text for many of the most used journals in the CINAHL index, with no embargo. CINAHL Plus with Full Text is the core research tool for all areas of nursing and allied health literature. Full text coverage dates back to 1937.
This comprehensive research database provides full text for nursing and allied health journals indexed in CINAHL Plus. Additional materials include full-text evidence-based care sheets, quick lessons and continuing education modules.
Content Includes:
340 active full-text, non-open access journals
7,600,000 records
5,600 journals indexed
1,400 journals with searchable cited references
Nursing and Allied Health Content from the Most Authoritative Sources
CINAHL Plus with Full Text includes publications from the National League for Nursing and the American Nurses Association. Many of the most popular full-text journals are available with no embargo. In addition, this resource offers access to health care books, nursing dissertations, selected conference proceedings, standards of practice, audiovisuals, book chapters and more.
CINAHL Plus with Full Text covers a wide range of topics including nursing, biomedicine, health sciences librarianship, alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health and 17 allied health disciplines.
More than 300 new subject headings have been added to CINAHL to help researchers find new concepts, including COVID-19, social distancing and vaping as well as new local terminology such as Aboriginal Canadians, First Nations of Canada, First Nations of Australia, and Torres Strait Islanders.
Additional Features:
- An easy-to-use interface with basic and advanced search features and searchable cited references
- Subject Headings that help users effectively search and retrieve information and follow the structure of the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) used by the National Library of Medicine
- Continuing education modules
- Research instruments records
- Full-text evidence-based care sheets
- Full-text quick lessons
- Author affiliations
The Cochrane Library is a collection of six databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making and includes the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. The Cochrane Library is freely available to NHS staff, patients and the public in Wales. Access guides on how to use the database here.
We Need Your Feedback: We want to know how Wales has benefited from access to Cochrane Library
Share your comments and suggestions with us before 31st October 2024.
DermNet NZ
The world's authority on skin information
DermNet NZ is the world’s free resource and authority on all things skin. We help thousands of people make informed, evidence-based decisions on how to care for skin conditions, by providing reliable information at the click of a button.
Embase <1974 to Current>
Embase <1996 to Current>
Comprehensive bibliographic coverage of the literature on drugs and pharmacology and of all other aspects of human medicine and related disciplines. Embase® is a key resource for biomedical evidence, from published, peer-reviewed literature, in-press publications and conference abstracts. Use Embase® to review clinical trials, to generate systematic reviews, to monitor products for pharmacovigilance and much more. Embase®’s comprehensive indexing - of drugs, devices, manufacturers and disease names - ensures maximum search ability.
Further information and support
New interface on Ovid (2022)
Further help videos on OVID can be found here: https://tools.ovid.com/ovidtools/videos.html
Boolean and other database searching techniques:
NHS Wales Library and Knowledge Services training group has worked with the e-Library to produce the following help video series, Exploring Evidence
Epistemonikos is a collaborative, multilingual database of health evidence. It is the largest source of systematic reviews relevant for health-decision making, and a large source of other types of scientific evidence.
Europe PMC is a repository, providing access to worldwide life science articles, books, patents and clinical guidelines.
GreenFILE is a free research database covering all aspects of human impact to the environment. Its collection of scholarly, government and general-interest titles includes content on global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more.
The Healthcare Administration Database provides reliable and relevant information on a wide range of topics, including hospitals, insurance, law, statistics, business management, personnel management, ethics, health economics, and public health administration. It features full text of key scholarly journals and thousands of dissertations and theses.
The health equity resource database is hosted by the health inequalities portal, an online information hub for research, policy, data, publications and other resources regarding health inequalities in Europe. The database allows you to search for such resources by keyword, as well as filtering by type (including policy and policy analysis), theme (including both factors affecting health and those relevant to the delivery of services, such as e-health, financing, governance and health systems), country, geographic level (from local to international) and year. It includes resources from across Europe and is a useful tool for finding grey literature.
Further information:
About Health Inequalities - Health Inequalities Portal (health-inequalities.eu)
Why is it important to address health inequalities?
Toolbox - Health Inequalities Portal (health-inequalities.eu)
HMIC is produced by the library services of the UK’s Department of Health and the King’s Fund. The HMIC database covers official publications, journal articles and grey literature relating to health and social care management, including management of the NHS; the quality of health services; estates management; regulation of medicines; medical equipment.
LISTA indexes more than 560 core journals, nearly 50 priority journals, and nearly 125 selective journals; plus books, research reports and proceedings. Subject coverage includes librarianship, classification, cataloging, bibliometrics, online information retrieval, information management and more.
MIDIRS Maternity and Infant Care Database collates information and resources relating to midwifery.
Whether it appears in an academic journal, in a government report, on a website or elsewhere, MIDIRS catalogue it and create a record on their database. It currently has over 250,000 of these records, making it the largest of its kind in the world. Midwives and midwifery students can rest assured that if it’s been written about, researched, reported on or debated, they’ll be able to find it on the MIDIRS.
Other resources
Webinars:
Using OVID for Literature Searching
New interface on Ovid (2022)
Further help videos on OVID can be found here: https://tools.ovid.com/ovidtools/videos.html
Boolean and other database searching techniques:
NHS Wales Library and Knowledge Services training group has worked with the e-Library to produce the following help video series, Exploring Evidence
Ovid MEDLINE <ALL>
Ovid MEDLINE <1946 to Current>
Ovid MEDLINE <1996 to Current>
Ovid MEDLINE and Epub ahead of Print, In-Process, In-Data Review & Other non-indexed citations and daily <1946 - Current>
Ovid MEDLINE Epub ahead of Print, In-Process, In-Data Review & Other non-indexed citations
About MEDLINE®
MEDLINE on this service contains over 20 million citations and abstracts, providing unparalleled access to worldwide biomedical literature. The database contains a broad range of medical topics relating to research, clinical practice, administration, policy issues, and health care services. Produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE contains all records published in Index Medicus and since 2002, most citations previously included in separate NLM specialty databases such as SPACELINE and HISTLINE. Subject content includes anatomy; communication disorders; microbiology; paramedical professions; pathology; physiology; psychiatry; toxicology; dentistry; parasitology; reproductive biology; epidemiology; gene therapy; surgical and pharmaceutical intervention; nursing practice; ethical and legal issues; institutional operations; laboratory techniques and procedures; diagnosis and management; clinical research trials and experimental treatment protocols; legislation and regulation; allied health specialties; continuing education; investigational drugs and new drug uses, and some veterinary medicine.
Further information and support
New interface on Ovid (2022)
Access MedicinesComplete from NHS Wales network.
Access MedicinesComplete with NHS Wales OpenAthens
MedicinesComplete provides medicines information and guidance on the safe use and administration of drugs and medicines. From diagnosis, to prescribing, dispensing, and administering medications, MedicinesComplete allows access to evidence-based support for health professionals.
Access further information on the 23 modules available in MedicinesComplete
The British National Formulary (BNF) and British National Formulary for Children (BNFC) apps can be downloaded from the apple or android app stores
Orthosearch – an orthopaedic-specific, taxonomy-driven discovery tool that provides the user with the most relevant results, from the first page to the last. Orthosearch indexes over 100 orthopaedic journals and the most important general medical journals, as well standards and guidelines, podcasts and conference abstracts to provide curated, comprehensive and up-to-date results. Journal impact factors, Altmetric scores and Citescores are clearly displayed to help the user target and access the content they need. Orthosearch’s innovative alert system allows users to set up and receive email updates across the literature on specialty areas of interest to them.
Here you can access the full collection of Ovid databases (AMED, Embase, HMIC, PsychInfo, Medline, MIDIRS, and Social Policy and Practice). If you access the databases this way, you can choose which sections of the databases you would like to search and search them together. Alternatively, if you would like to search the databases one by one, you can also find them listed individually.
Further Information
Further help videos on OVID can be found here: https://tools.ovid.com/ovidtools/videos.html
Boolean and other database searching techniques:
NHS Wales Library and Knowledge Services training group has worked with the e-Library to produce the following help video series, Exploring Evidence
PEDro is a freely available database of over 39,000 randomised trials, systematic reviews and clinical practice guidelines in physiotherapy. Produced by the Centre for Evidence-Based Physiotherapy, Australia.
The ProQuest Dialog Platform allows you to across search on the following databases:
British Nursing Index
APA PsycInfo <1806 to Current>
APA PsycInfo <2002 to Current>
PsycINFO contains more than 4 million bibliographic records centered on psychology and the behavioral and social sciences, the interdisciplinary content in PsycINFO® makes it one of the most highly utilized databases by students, researchers, educators, and practitioners worldwide.
It contains citations and summaries of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, books, dissertations, and technical reports, all in the field of psychology and the psychological aspects of related disciplines, such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, anthropology, business, and law.
Journal coverage, spanning 1806 to present, includes international material selected from more than 2,500 periodicals from more than 49 countries written in 29 languages. Current chapter and book coverage includes worldwide English-language material published from 1987 to present. Over 80,000 records are added annually through weekly updates. More than 36 million references in over 870,000 journal articles, books, and book chapters; retrospective to 2001 and earlier, where available; more than 3.2 million references from 1920 to 2000.
Further Information
Webinar
Further help videos on OVID can be found here: https://tools.ovid.com/ovidtools/videos.html
Boolean and other database searching techniques:
NHS Wales Library and Knowledge Services training group has worked with the e-Library to produce the following help video series, Exploring Evidence
PubMed provides free access to 26.8 million records ranging from citations, abstracts and full text in the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, health care systems, and pre-clinical sciences. Using this link will connect you to full text articles available via the NHS Wales e-Library.
Scopus is a citation database
What is a citation database?
A citation database can be used for cited reference searches, enabling users to find, check and track citation data year-by-year, navigating forward and backward through the literature related to a topic. A citation database can also be used to:
- Provide a mechanism for distinguishing between authors with the same name, or an author's name that has been presented in different ways
- analyse search results to show the number of documents broken down by various criteria, including year, author, source, affiliation, or subject categories
- search within results by adding additional terms to the initial search
- identify highly cited works related to a particular topic
- find related works that share references or authors
- create search alerts to keep up to date with developments in your discipline or organisation
- set up citation alerts to notify you when a document or author is cited elsewhere
- set up alerts to notify you about new documents by an author
- generate a profile that presents an analysis and citation summary of works published by an institution or author(s), including h-index
- compare the performance of journals in a particular subject area.
Using Citation Databases in NHS Wales
A citation database enables the opportunity to track, monitor and measure the impact of this output across NHS Wales.
It supports researchers, library and information professionals, research and development departments and the wider workforce to track their own and institutional research output and provide tools for analysis of impact.
This supports institutions to identify their research strengths, where there could be opportunities for new research and potential collaboration across organisations.
Further support on SCOPUS
Personal Accounts in Elsevier e-resources
Social Policy and Practice (SPP) is a comprehensive bibliographic database for those working or studying in the health and social care sectors - bringing together information from the UK's five leading collections of health and social care resources.
Social Policy and Practice helps professionals, practitioners, researchers and students interested in health and social care to identify articles and publications of relevance to the UK context. It is widely used by universities and NHS Trusts, as well as by charities and specialist research institutes.
Social Policy and Practice is updated quarterly. Users may also search Ageinfo and Social Care Online separately to access the most recent content from these databases.
Social Policy and Practice brings together data from the following 5 leading collections of social policy and practice
resources:
- AgeInfo - Centre for Policy on Ageing
- NSPCC - National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
- Planex - IDOX Information Service
- Social Care Online - Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE)
- ChildData – National Children’s Bureau (NCB)
Each of the 5 includes customized Abstracts and Indexing, based on their extensive experience in each speciality. This helps ensure that users can find the information they’re looking for, and that they can easily assess the relevance of each item to their inquiry.
Social Policy and Practice contains over 400,000 bibliographic records and abstracts dating from 1981, with over 24,000 new records added every year. Its customized Abstracts and Indexing help ensure that users can find the information they’re looking for, and that they can easily assess the relevance of each item to their inquiry. About 30% of the content is hard-to-find report literature; most references have direct links to full text.
With a focus on evidence-based information, topics and subjects span children and young people as well as adults and older people. These include: health and wellbeing, play, social and family policy, social care, crime and youth justice, child protection and safeguarding, mental illness, climate change and policy, and more.
More information:
https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/solutions/ovid/social-policy-and-practice-1859
Further help videos on OVID can be found here: https://tools.ovid.com/ovidtools/videos.html
Boolean and other database searching techniques:
NHS Wales Library and Knowledge Services training group has worked with the e-Library to produce the following help video series, Exploring Evidence
Log in with NHS Wales OpenAthens
The Sociology Collection provides access to Sociological Abstracts in combination with other databases covering the international literature in sociology and social services, along with related fields. Together, it provides abstracts, indexing, and full-text coverage of journal articles, books, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, and more, including full-text from hundreds of leading sociology journals.
Sociology Collection resides on the ProQuest Platform. More information on the ProQuest Platform is available on the ProQuest Platform LibGuide.
Further Information and Support
For more information about the Sociology Collection, navigate to the Content Page.
The Transfusion Evidence Library is a database of systematic reviews and randomised controlled trials (updated monthly) relevant to transfusion medicine.
TravelHealthPro is the website comprising the travel health resources of the National Travel Health Network and Centre (NaTHNaC). It is the recommended resource for NHS Wales to use when looking for travel health information.
Trip PRO 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 has extra content and functionality to Trip+ including 100,000+ extra systematic reviews, information on over 175,000 ongoing clinical trials, medical images and videos and an advanced search.
Access is instant from the NHS Wales network but users can also register for a personal account to access from home. Simply enter your email address, and when given the option select your NHS Wales institution to be granted full access to Trip PRO.
Further help
Webinars