CINAHL and MEDLINE: A database of scientific articles related to allied health and nursing

Running head: SCHOLARLY DATABSES OF GCU LIBRARY
SCHOLARLY DATABSES OF GCU LIBRARY
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1SCHOLARLY DATABSES OF GCU LIBRARY
Evidenced based practice (EBP) is the best way to effect holistic patient care.
CINAHL is a database on which nursing practitioners, researchers and students relies on to
collect valid information from 2928 journals related to allied health and nursing. MEDLINE
provides information related to nursing, healthcare, medicine and drug. This database delivers
citations of more than 5400 journals related to healthcare. (Martín-Rodero, Sanz-Valero &
Galindo-Villardón, 2018) Therefore, CINAHAL and MEDLINE are two databases, which
can provide research articles from authentic peer-reviewed journals to support the EBP
proposal.
Google scholar or normal internet search cannot provide subject specific information
all the time. There is no easy way to sort articles based on type of material or relevance with
the proposed topic. Sometimes it is not possible to find results based on publication time.
Google scholar or internet search lack the comprehensive criteria to limit the search. Full
texts of electronic articles are available but printed articles are not easily available most of the
time.
Library databases like CINAHAL and MEDLINE provide precise subject-specific
search. Research articles and journals can be searched based on relevance and publication
date in these databases (Wright, Golder & Lewis-Light, 2015). The type of material can also
be sorted accordingly. Therefore, journals, magazines can be searched separately based on
requirements. Searches can be limited based on different criteria. If the library has the
subscription then these databases provide free full text of any article.
Therefore, the library databases are better tools to search for precise articles to support
the EBP plan compared to general internet search and google scholar.

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References
Martín-Rodero, H., Sanz-Valero, J., & Galindo-Villardón, P. (2018). The methodological
quality of systematic reviews indexed in the MEDLINE database: A multivariate
approach. The Electronic Library, 36(1), 146-158.
Wright, K., Golder, S., & Lewis-Light, K. (2015). What value is the CINAHL database when
searching for systematic reviews of qualitative studies?. Systematic reviews, 4(1), 104.