CINAHL (short for the Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature) is one of the largest and most in-depth nursing research databases. It provides full-text to over 935 nursing and allied health journals, with indexing for several thousand others. ANMF Victorian Branch members can access CINAHL Ultimate through the Members Menu:
If you are experiencing difficulty logging in, contact the Membership Department membership@anmfvic.asn.au
Setting up a free EBSCO account allows to to set up search and journal alerts. Alerts are a good way to have articles from a particular publication or on a particular topic of interest to be delivered to you as soon as they are available. Setting up an account also allows you to save search and content preferences, organise your research, retrieve your search history, and share papers with others. If you do not yet have an account, click Sign In from the CINAHL homepage and follow the steps.
Image: State of Digital Publishing © 2018.
If you find an article indexed in CINAHL (or elsewhere) but you can't access the full-text (or you've hit a paywall), the Library's interlibrary loan service can assist. The ANMF Victorian Branch Library is part of a network of 100s of health & medical libraries around Australia. This means that if we don't have access to the journal article, book, chapter, report, etc. through our various subscriptions, we can most likely source it for you through our networks. Simply fill in the form below and we will endeavor to fulfill your request within 2 business days (usually sooner). There is no charge for this service.
SCImago Journal Rank attempts to provide objective rankings of journal titles according to their influence in the scholarly community. SCImago ranks journals based on the impact of papers they publish, accounting for the number of citations received and the ranking of journals where these citations came from. While ranking systems based on citation data rather than judgment are inevitably flawed (Hicks & Wolters, 2015), SCImago still provides a good overview of the most highly regarded journal titles according to discipline, sub-discipline and country. Provided are links to the highest ranked nursing journals nationally and internationally.
CINAHL Ultimate offers full-text of these following highly-ranked nursing & midwifery journals:
As the 'gold standard' nursing & allied health research database, CINAHL has very powerful searching capabilities. However, its interface can be overwhelming for those new to the database. These two videos produced recently from EBSCO in September 2022 quickly provide an overview of basic & advanced searching to help you get started with your search. Advanced searching is recommended, as it allows more targeted searching.
Before you search CINAHL (or other databases), it pays off to consider your topic in a systematic way. Generally, this involves refining your research topic or area of interest into one or more specific, answerable question/s. Once this is done, follow these steps:
It may help to use a 'logic grid' (see a template below) to conceptualise your search. This involves separating out concepts into columns, creating a list of synonyms and related terms, and then using this information to run an advanced search.
*Examples adapted from guides by the University of Adelaide and EBP Librarian.