Nursing and Midwifery Guide
This guide provides information and links to nursing and midwifery resources available to KGH staff.
The Knowledge and Library Service have subscriptions to a range of national, regional and locally purchased healthcare and clinical content and we’d like you to get the most out of each resource. This guide should help you to use the resources more effectively by providing links, information and advice on the available tools and resources.
For Internationally Educated Nurses we have created a special guide for you, with tips to help you settle in to life in the NHS and prepare for your NMC Test of Competence.
If you have a question regarding anything in this guide or you are encountering issues accessing any of these resources then please contact us at [email protected]
Nursing and Midwifery Knowledge and Library Services Digital Flyer
NHS__NursingandMidwife_Digital_FlyerFINAL22Books | eBooks
The library’s collection of print and electronic books cover many areas of clinical and healthcare topics. Our collection is constantly updated in line with user recommendations and the release of new editions.
You must be a member of the library if you wish to borrow a book; Register to join online. Search our catalogue to find the books you need, as well as: check item availability and locations, request or reserve titles and manage your existing loans. We have a book return box, so you can return books at a time that suits you.
Knowledge and Library Hub
The NHS Knowledge and Library Hub allows you to search across our library catalogue, journal subscriptions and other library resources. Use this search box to find books, e-books, articles and much more.
You must log in with your OpenAthens account in order to see the full list of results.
Can’t find what you are looking for? We can also borrow books from other NHS libraries on your behalf.
If you can’t find what you are looking for please fill in a book request form. To recommend a book for the collection email the team.
Royal Marsden Manual
Royal Marsden Manual of Clinical Nursing Procedures
An online version of this key nursing text. The Manual includes over 350 evidence-based clinical procedures related to every aspect of care.
Access: Log in with OpenAthens account (institution NHS in England)
Journals | E-journals
BrowZine is a web app which allows you to search, read, and monitor your favourite journals, making it easier to keep up to date with the latest research in your area of practice. To access our subscription go to http://browzine.com.
Access: NHS OpenAthens account
Browse the collection now for your favourite journals using the BrowZine search function.
If you are looking for a specific article but it is not included in one of our journal subscriptions, please complete the article request form.
Searching Guides
e-Learning – Literature Searching
A short course from e-Learning for Healthcare covering searching principles and techniques.
Library guide to literature searching
Tips and tools to help you navigate databases and find what you need.
e-Learning- Critical Appraisal
The short critical appraisal programme has been designed to enable the healthcare workforce (clinical and non-clinical) to build confidence in the critical appraisal process when applying and evaluating research.
Useful information on critically appraising literature.
If you would like 1:1 or group training on using databases or critically appraising literature you can see what is on offer and book online via our training pages.
Knowledge and Library Hub
The NHS Knowledge and Library Hub allows you to search across our library catalogue, journal subscriptions and other library resources. Use this search box to find books, e-books, articles and much more.
You must log in with your OpenAthens account in order to see the full list of results.
Databases
You have access to the following databases via your OpenAthens account.
British Nursing Index is a leading database for support of practice, education, and research for nurses, midwives, and health providers in the UK or following UK practice. It provides references to literature in the most relevant nursing and midwifery journals. Also included are relevant nursing articles from selected medical, allied health, community and health management journals. Coverage is mainly titles published in the UK, plus a selection of important international nursing titles.
Coverage: 1994-Current
Access: NHS OpenAthens account
CINAHL Ultimate is the new definitive resource for nursing and allied health research, providing full text for more of the most used journals in the CINAHL index than any other database. It covers more than 50 nursing specialties and includes quick lessons, evidence-based care sheets, CEU modules and research instruments. CINAHL Ultimate includes rigorous curation and indexing of open access (OA) journals, which has resulted in a growing collection of 1,253 active global OA journals. Once validated and certified for inclusion, these OA journals are treated with high-quality subject indexing and sophisticated, precise/accurate full-text linking.
Access: NHS OpenAthens account for eligible users
EMCARE covers all nursing specialties and nursing healthcare professions. Includes international coverage of allied health, education and training, development and management, midwifery, health and healthcare economics, clinical medical and healthcare social work, psychiatry and mental health, and traumatology, emergency and critical-care medicine.
Access: NHS OpenAthens account
The Allied and Complementary Medicine Database (AMED) is a bibliographic database covering a selection of journals in complementary medicine, palliative care, and several professions allied to medicine.
Coverage: 1985 to present
Access: NHS OpenAthens account
Embase (Excerpta Medica Database) is a biomedical and pharmacological database containing more than 30 million records including articles from more than 8,500 journals. It is especially strong in its coverage of drug and pharmaceutical research, pharmacology and toxicology.
Access: NHS OpenAthens account
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 5,600 current biomedical journals.
Access: NHS OpenAthens account
Nursing & Allied Health Database
ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health Source provides users with reliable healthcare information covering nursing, allied health, alternative and complementary medicine, and much more. This versatile database is designed to meet the needs of researchers at healthcare facilities as well as nursing and allied health programs at academic institutions. ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health Source provides abstracting and indexing for more than 850 titles, with over 715 titles in full-text, plus more than 12,000 full text dissertations representing the most rigorous scholarship in nursing and related fields.
Access: NHS OpenAthens account for eligible users
PubMed comprises over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. PubMed citations and abstracts include the fields of biomedicine and health. PubMed also links to the other NCBI molecular biology resources. PubMed is developed and maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM).
Access Free
Trip 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. Users can search across research articles and papers, images, videos, patient information leaflets, educational courses and news.
Access: NHS OpenAthens account.
Practice Guidelines & Systematic Reviews
National Guidance
NICE Guidance, including care pathways, interventional procedure guidance, quality standards and more.
Further information on ‘types of guideline’.
Local Guidelines
Clinical policies and guidelines – see KNet
Clinical Decision Support tools
Clinical Decision Support tools are reference resources designed to support clinical decision-making. Health care professionals utilise these tools to quickly lookup information concerning diagnostic and treatment guidance at the point-of-care with a patient.
Clinical Decision Support tools contain detailed summaries of a wide range of conditions and interventions, supported by synthesized and evaluated evidence-based research and/or peer-reviewed sources. Summaries are curated by health professionals and regularly updated to reflect new evidence. Summaries can include levels of evidence, rating scales or grade recommendations as well as citations back to the original research studies, systematic reviews, or guidelines.
BMJ Best Practice is a clinical decision support tool, uniquely structured around the patient consultation, with advice on symptom evaluation, tests to order and treatment approach. Access to BMJ Best Practice is provided by Health Education England to all NHS staff in England. See our Clinical Decision Support Guide for more info.
DynaMed provides clinically-organised summaries for over 3,000 disease and condition topics, incorporating over 1,000 drug topics. DynaMed editors monitor the content of over 500 medical journals, using a rigorous seven-step methodology for selecting and critically appraising each selected article. See our Clinical Decision Support Guide for more info.
Discover more here
Tools and Resources
Quality Improvement
Data & Statistics
Images and MultiMedia
Open Access
Clinical Skills
Royal Marsden Manual (rmmonline.co.uk)
Over 350 evidence-based clinical procedures related to every aspect of care, from handwashing to cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
- Flexible access – designed for smartphones, tablets and desktops – giving you access to content wherever suits you best.
- Search function – a brand-new search engine to find procedures faster than ever before.
- Can support you through the revalidation process.
- Brand new videos clearly showing step by step procedures
- Includes access to both the Professional Edition and the brand new Cancer Manual
Evidence-Based Care Sheets
Found in CINAHL Ultimate, Evidence-Based Care Sheets (EBCS) are summaries on specific key topics, which are focused on nursing practice. Each evidence-based care sheet incorporates the latest evidence, statistics, research and references on a given topic. The references are ranked, using a coding matrix, according to the type of literature they represent (systematic reviews, meta-analysis, etc).
From CINAHL Ultimate, you can browse the list of Evidence-Based Care Sheets from the toolbar at the top of the page.
Quick Lessons
Quick Lessons (QL) are clinically organized nursing overviews, with information mapped to the nursing workflow (i.e. description/etiology, signs and symptoms, assessment, treatment goals, red flags, what to tell the patient/patient’s family).
From CINAHL Ultimate you can browse the list of Quick Lessons from the toolbar at the top of the page.
Anatomy TV
all staff have access to Anatomy.TV from Primal Pictures.
Access is via your NHS OpenAthens account on any device, and we have access to two modules – 3D Atlas and Functional Anatomy. We have five user licences, so we would ask that you logoff after you have finished to allow other people to log on.
Medicine Management
RCN Medicines Management Guide
Resource collection from the RCN on Medicines Management
British National Formulary (BNF)
Guidance on prescribing, monitoring, dispensing and administering medicines.
British National Formulary for Children (BNFC)
Guidance on prescribing, monitoring, dispensing, and administering medicines for children.
electronic medicines compendium (emc)
Up to date, easily accessible information about medicines licensed for use in the UK. Contains Summaries of Product Characteristics (SmPC), Patient information leaflets, Risk Minimisation Materials and more.
Keeping up-to-date and Current Awareness
Evidence and current awareness updates can provide highly tailored, individual updates of newly published healthcare information in your areas of interest.
Personalised Evidence Updates
KnowledgeShare Evidence Updates is a personalised current awareness service allowing you to receive new evidence on topics tailored to your requirements. It covers policy documents and a range of summarised evidence, so you won’t be inundated with primary research articles.
Log-in using your OpenAthens details, go to your profile, select edit (the pencil symbol), and specify your areas of interest – you can be as broad or as detailed as you like – and how often you would like to be updated. You can amend these at any time by logging in. Your evidence update will be configured to ensure you only receive relevant, high-quality information.
If you’re not a library member, please register with the library by using the online form or filling out a registration form available in the library.
Continuing Professional Development
CPD and revalidation are priority concerns for all health care practitioners and the library has access to a number of resources to support you to capture evidence and build your portfolio.
As well as the resources covered here the library offer a number of training course in literature searching and critical appraisal which can be recorded as CPD activities.
If you have a question regarding anything you see in this guide please contact us at [email protected]
Revalidation and CPD resources
Information and resources from the Nursing and Midwifery Council for revalidation.
RCN Revalidation
Advice on the revalidation process and what support the RCN can offer.
RCNi Learning
RCNi Learning is an interactive, online and mobile resource designed to help nurses meet continuing professional development requirements and to help students bridge the gap between theory and practice. RCNi Learning features approximately 215 interactive learning modules on a wide variety of specialties. Content is evidence-based and peer-reviewed by academics, nurse leaders and senior practitioners to ensure it promotes best practice. All modules have been accredited by the RCN.
Preceptorship Resources
Preceptorship In Nursing (2024)
The transition between student to qualified nurse is an important process. This reading list contains resources to help preceptors and preceptees alike throughout this important time. Links to free training resources around up skilling nurses to face the challenges brought by COVID-19 have also been added. Many of the resources listed can be accessed via the KGH Knowledge and Library Service (KLS).
Reflective practice
Reflective practice is a way of studying an experience you have had to understand what happened, as well as exploring your own actions and thinking, allowing you to identify changes to improve the way you work. Reflective practice gives health professionals who want to carry on learning throughout their working lives the tools to improved performance.
E-Learning
KGH Statutory and Mandatory Training
Information on the statutory and mandatory training required by the Trust.
See Knet and ESR Hub
e-Learning for Healthcare (e-LfH)
e-Learning for Healthcare (e-LfH) is a Health Education England (HEE) online learning platform. Modules have been designed in partnership with the NHS and professional bodies to provide medical and healthcare training covering subjects from audiology to anaesthesia, dentistry to dermatology, emergency medicine to end of life care, primary care to prescribing, safeguarding children to statutory and mandatory training.
The Learning Hub provides easy access to a wide range of educational resources, elearning, specialist health and care content and more which have been developed or shared by professional organisations such as the Royal Colleges, universities and other health and care organisations.
Study Skills resources
Returning to study after some time away can feel daunting, the following resources have been selected to help you to better understand what skills you will need to develop when returning to study. These books have tips on how to study effectively and guide readers through the process of how to make the most out studying and using resources.
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