Research Guides: Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) Resources: Databases

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Access Physiotherapy

This 16-minute video is an overview of the collection and capabilities within the AccessPhysiotherapy & F.A. Davis PT Collection.

CINAHL Databases - Advanced Searching Tutorial

CINAHL has numerous limiters to make your searches more precise and valuable resources such as the Evidence Based Care Sheets. NOTE: We do NOT recommend checking the Full Text limiter, as this will restrict your search to articles available in full text from the EBSCO database only. We may have access to the article you need via another database.

EBSCO Medline Tutorial

This brief tutorial covers basic and advanced searching in EBSCO's Medline. Please note that our version of Medline is not the full-text version; however, partial full text is accessible through SFX links.

PubMed Filters

PubMed's basic keyword search is different from EBSCO Medline's in that your terms are automatically mapped to the most relevant subject (MeSH) terms. This allows you to find more possible articles, however sometimes there are too many results. Filter your results using the limiters option whitin PubMed to make more precise searches.

Recommended Databases

The most commonly used databases (CINAHL, Medline, and PubMed) have video tutorials on the left. It is recommended to create personal accounts within databases so you can utilized different features that the platforms offers such as:

saving lists of items
saving search histories
set up reoccurring searches.

If you need help with any of the databases do not hesitate to contact me at etorres@hpu.edu.

AccessPhysiotherapy This link opens in a new window
AccessPhysiotherapy offers resources on physical therapy, including textbooks, procedure and exercise videos, image galleries, and more.
F.A. Davis PT Collection This link opens in a new window
The F.A. Davis PT Collection offers physical therapy references, case studies, and videos.
Alt HealthWatch (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
This database focuses on the many perspectives of complementary, holistic and integrated approaches to health care and wellness. It offers libraries full text articles for more than 180 international, and often peer-reviewed journals and reports. In addition, there are hundreds of pamphlets, booklets, special reports, original research and book excerpts. Alt HealthWatch provides in-depth coverage across the full spectrum of subject areas covered by complementary and alternative medicine. This database features indexing and abstracts going back as far as 1984, and full text going back as far as 1990.
CINAHL Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
CINAHL Complete is the world's most comprehensive nursing & allied health research database, providing full text for more than 1,350 journals indexed in CINAHL. Of those, 953 are not found with full text in any version of Academic Search, Health Source or Nursing & Allied Health Collection. This authoritative file contains full text for many of the most used journals in the CINAHL index, with no embargo. With full-text coverage dating back to 1937, CINAHL Complete is the definitive research tool for all areas of nursing and allied health literature.
Cochrane Library This link opens in a new window
The Cochrane Library is a collection of six databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making, and a seventh database that provides information about Cochrane groups. Includes full-text Cochrane systematic reviews.
Consumer Health Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Consumer Health Complete (CHC) is EBSCO's interface designed for the everyday consumer of health care information. CHC provides convenient access to easily understandable health and medical information. Consumers can search and browse within medical encyclopedias, popular reference books, and magazine articles.
Google Scholar @ HPU This link opens in a new window
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Accessing Google Scholar via this link authenticates your off-campus computer, enabling off-campus access to the Libraries' resources.
Health Source - Consumer Edition (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
This database is the richest collection of consumer health information available to libraries worldwide, providing information on many health topics including the medical sciences, food sciences and nutrition, childcare, sports medicine and general health. Health Source: Consumer Edition provides access to nearly 80 full text, consumer health magazines.
Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
This database provides nearly 550 scholarly full text journals focusing on many medical disciplines. Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition also features the AHFS Consumer Medication Information, which covers 1,300 generic drug patient education sheets with more than 4,700 brand names.
MEDLINE (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
MEDLINE provides authoritative medical information on medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and much more. Created by the National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE uses MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) indexing with tree, tree hierarchy, subheadings and explosion capabilities to search citations from over 5,400 current biomedical journals.
Ovid LWW Total Access Collection This link opens in a new window
Contains approximately 300 full-text nursing and health sciences journals, including Nursing, American Journal of Nursing (AJN), and Nursing Made Incredibly Easy. NOTE: limited to 3 simultaneous users per journal.
PsycNET This link opens in a new window
Provides access to PsycINFO (citations and abstracts in psychological, social, behavioral, and health sciences) and PsycARTICLES (full-text journal articles in subject areas such as applied psychology, health, theory, research, social/personality, and more).
PubMed @ HPU This link opens in a new window
PubMed comprises more than 24 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Access the database via PubMed @ HPU to see linked full text.
ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text access to scholarly journals in the physical, social and health sciences.
SpringerLink This link opens in a new window
Contains full-text Springer ebooks (published from 2005 – 2013) and journals focusing primarily on science, technology and medicine.

For a complete listing of nursing and health sciences databases available, please click on the link below.

Searching Tips

Keywords vs Subject Terms (CINAHL Headings or MeSH)...

Keywords are a good way to start a search.
Generate keywords by describing important concepts in your own words. Make a list.
Subject Terms are assigned words or phrases used to label materials (similar to hashtags)
Whenever you find an article, look for the subject terms associated with it to use it in your subsequent searches.
You can also search for subject terms within databases.

Connecting your terms...

Join similar concepts or alternate term with "OR."
Link different parts of your topic with "AND."
Exclude concepts with "NOT."

Use Limiters within databases...

Depending on what you are looking for you can use specific limiters to filter your results and make searches more precise.
Most common limiters is Peer-Reviewed Journals, which limits your results to scholarly journals that count on experts in disciplines to review drafts of articles prior to publishing them.
Limiters are specific to databases CINAHL has numerous valuable limiters such as Evidenced Based, Clinical Queries, Age Groups among others

Narrow the Date Range...

When looking for Current Research or Evidence-Based Practices limit your date range to the last 3-5 years.

Finding the Full Article...

In most database when you click on the title of a specific article, they re-direct you in the item record, where you can see the bibliographic information, abstract of the article and options to save or cite. The abstract is a short description of what the article is about, it is recommended to always read it to determine if you want the article or not. To read or download the full article itself, you must click the Full Text link within the database. There Full Text migh be in PDF or in HTML format.

Full Text = Full Article

About the Link Resolver (Find It!)

Find It! is the Libraries' "link resolver;" it links an article citation to the full-text of the article, if available. When you see the Find It! button near a citation in an online database, simply click on it. The HPU Discovery menu page will open and indicate whether full text is available, and if so, provide a link to the article. If not, you may request the article via Interlibrary Loan.

Open-Access Databases

Open-access stands for unrestricted access and unrestricted reuse. These open databases may be useful in your search for evidence, however in some cases, free full text is NOT available, but you can check if you have access via HPU database subscriptions

or request via interlibrary loan.

PEDro This link opens in a new window
PEDro (Physiotherapy Evidence Database) provides over 53,000 trials, reviews and guidelines evaluating physiotherapy interventions.

TRIP Database
The Turning Research Into Practice (TRIP) Database is a UK-based meta-search engine for clinical information.
National Guideline Clearinghouse
Allows you to search or browse for guidelines (which must have been developed, reviewed, or revised within the last 5 years) provided by various public and private organizations. Includes links to patient education materials, mobile resources, and other resources for guidelines
ClinicalTrials.gov
Contains clinical trials, both federally and privately funded. Note that the results data--which is NOT peer-reviewed--is in tabular format with no narrative or conclusions.

General CINAHL Information

CINAHL Support Center
Help sheets, FAQs, tutorials, and everything else you need to know is available from EBSCO's CINAHL Support Center.
CINAHL Title List
Which journals are indexed in CINAHL Plus with Full Text?
CINAHL Document Types
See how CINAHL defines its document types (e.g., Clinical Trial, Review).
CINAHL Topical Subheadings
See how CINAHL defines its topical subheadings (e.g., Risk Factors, Therapy)

EBSCO Medline Information and FAQs

The process for searching, obtaining full text of articles, and using your folder/EBSCOhost account in Medline is the same as in CINAHL and in other EBSCO databases.

Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) Resources: Databases