1. Literature Searching
Paramedic Practice
Falmer Library

2. Journal articles: What and Why?
• Academic publications published regularly containing articles
by academics and practitioners.
• Journals can be academic or practitioner focused.
• Why use them?-
• They provide current perspective
• Contain information that might not be available elsewhere
• Academically credible. Many undergo Peer Review process.

3. Online databases…
The best way of finding relevant journal articles
is searching in the health related databases.
These are available from the
Online Library http://library.brighton.ac.uk
To find one relevant for you click on “Resources
by Subject”

4. Database Details
Databases...(2)
Comprises of 220 elected nursing journals from
British Nursing Index 1982. No full text.
Nursing & allied health: 3,000 journals, 1 mil
CINAHL with full text records, inc articles, health care books, nursing
dissertations, selected conf proceedings,
standards of practice, book chapters...
5,000 journal titles, 17 mil records, going back to
PubMed / Medline 1950. Medicine, nursing & allied health. Some
full text where available.
Database containing reliable evidence about the
The Cochrane Library effects of healthcare, including systematic
reviews, clinical trials, controlled trials
An Information
02/12/2011
Services Presentation

5. Database Details
Databases...(2)
Provides easy access to a comprehensive
NHS Evidence evidence base for clinicians, public health
professionals, commissioners and service
managers making decisions on treatments or
use of resources – to improve health and patient
care. Provides a portal to a variety of online
resources.
2500 journals, from 1800 onwards. Covers
PsycInfo psychological aspects of many disciplines.
1000 titles, majority in full text
ProQuest Med Library
An Information
02/12/2011
Services Presentation

6. Firstly think about…
• What question are you trying to answer?
– Break the question down into keywords
• What do you already know?
– Is there anything you’ve already read you could use?
• What do you want to exclude?
– Do you have a date range?

7. Example search…
Responding to elderly people who fall
paramedic OR prehospital care OR ambulance
AND
elder* OR old*people OR aged
AND
Fall* OR accident

8. Constructing a search strategy…
• Think about your keywords
– Are there any other words you could use to describe them?
• Are you searching for an exact expression?
– Putting an expression in (brackets) or “speech marks” will help
find these
• Use AND, OR, NOT
– children AND teenagers – articles must have both these words
– children OR teenagers – articles can have either word
– children NOT teenagers – will only find the first word

9. Constructing a search strategy…
• Use truncation
– By using * you can extend your results e.g. child* will find
child, children, childhood
• Use field searching
– Databases let you search within the author, title, abstract,
journal name etc. This may help narrow your results
• Be flexible
– If at first you don’t succeed re-examine your keywords!

10. Finding full-text…
Databases will often only give you an abstract or
short description of an article. If there is no full-
text link on the page then look for
By clicking on this you can check whether we
hold an article electronically.

11. Other things to think about…
• Currency
– databases let you limit your search by date, some lecturers
will only want you to include current materials
• Peer-reviewed
– some databases let you search for peer-reviewed articles,
these have been reviewed by experts on that subject
• Types of articles
– you may want to find case studies, qualitative or quantitative
research, literature reviews etc. you can add these as
keywords to your search
– primary or secondary sources – databases find both, so be
aware of this when searching

12. http://nursingvids.weebly.com/