As a nursing student, you will write many nursing assignments during your time in school. As you work on these assignments, you will encounter many resources that could confuse you. It can be challenging to decide which resources to use, considering that nursing is a tough discipline guided by scientific studies. The best resources for nursing assignments are those that provide credible, verifiable, relevant, and timely information like peer-reviewed nursing journals, guidelines on evidence-based practices, etc.
In this article, our nursing writers have provided a list of the best resources you can use to write effective nursing papers and assignments like capstone projects.
To evaluate a nursing resource or a medical writing resource, you should consider using the CRAAP test, which means evaluating:
Having said that, several sites can help you know whether the website or material you are about to use for your nursing research is authentic. They include:
Use the following evaluation criteria from healthcare and library communities every time you use a resource for your nursing assignment.
Since you will write a lot of nursing assignments in your time in school, you should understand the need for good resources.
Using high-quality peer-reviewed journal resources in your nursing assignment shows that all your arguments and ideas are well-informed and grounded in scientific research. These resources have been written by experts in the nursing and medical field and have undergone further review processes to ensure their ethnicity. This means that readers can trust what you are saying.
You will be tasked with writing an effective nursing plan at some point in your studies and nursing career. Using nursing resources will help provide research-based information that you can use to design your nursing plan. You can use this evidence to justify why you needed a specific intervention and treatment for the patient's condition.
All medical resources are based on scientific studies. This means experts did research based on relevant data, which they used to write the articles. Moreover, you can easily access all the research methods and data instead of someone's opinions. It’s easy for someone to say what they want on the internet, but the beauty of scientific studies is that they provide a chain of evidence for you to ascertain the conclusions.
Using current scientific studies will help you stay updated with relevant information and research in the medical field. Through this information, you can identify any gaps in knowledge that can act as a basis for more scientific research. This can provide valuable insights for your studies.
Furthermore, evidence-based studies help nurses and nursing students update their knowledge based on the current changes and findings in the field. In turn, this helps in improving their services in the prevention, treatment, diagnosis, and patient care.
Staying up to date with scientific information and research can prepare you for nursing or related careers, graduate school, and clinical. When you effectively demonstrate your understanding of different nursing topics in your assignment through evidence-based research, it means you can be trusted with the responsibility of caring for patients.
While including quotations and citations in your nursing papers shows how much research you’ve conducted, it also helps in enhancing your thinking. By researching different nursing sources, you develop a deeper understanding of the ideas and arguments in your field. In essence, it is about having a conversation with these sources. You will be pushing back and forth between your thinking and that of others.
Scientific resources are not only a way of supporting your arguments but also help you gain different perspectives on the chosen topic. The best research is one that develops from a previous one. So, by exploring different research on your chosen topic, you demonstrate that you are willing to stand on the shoulders of other researchers and further their arguments.
Most research stems from the gaps in other people's research. One researcher's studies can be an invaluable source for another researcher. This means that when readers are reviewing your sources, they will also be looking for ways to answer related questions. In other words, they will want to explore and extend the conclusions of your ideas and arguments.
As with most disciplines, there are different places to look for research resources for your nursing paper. These information-rich spaces and platforms consolidate research from various nursing scholars and researchers.
Peer-reviewed journals are among the best tools to use when researching your nursing papers or assignments. When researchers, clinicians, and scientists want a place to publish the results of their findings, this is their go-to place.
PubMed is a free tool with over 36 citations and abstracts for biomedical sources from Medline science journals and online books. Its aim is to improve health globally by providing access to factual information about biomedicine, health fields, and related disciplines such as behavioral science. The database doesn't contain full-text article journals, but there are links that direct you to where you can find that information when available, such as the publication website or PubMed Central.
PubMed consists of over 33 million records of articles dating back to 1966, which you can search by using keywords and automatic mapping linked to MeSH key terms. For instance, if searching for clinical trials, just key in the terms “clinical queries.”
CINAHL stands for the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature. It is the world’s most comprehensive nursing database and is regarded as the best tool for nursing research. CINAHL allows you to search for health articles among 1,446 active global OA journals. Besides this, you can also find plenty of evidence-based care sheets, quick lessons, legal cases, and clinical trials providing overviews of diseases and conditions and an outline of the most effective treatment options.
CINAHL indexes articles from nursing, biomedical, consumer health journals, and other health-related disciplines from records dating back to 1937 and expanded content. It uses thesaurus terms related to MeSH headings.
Medline Plus provides authoritative information about different areas in the medical field like nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and pre-clinical sciences. This database consists of bibliographic articles and journals that have been compiled by the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM).
Medline can be freely accessed through the internet, PubMed, or the National Center for Biotechnology Information Entrez system.
HaPI is a bibliographic database providing teachers and students with over 240,000 records containing detailed, wide-ranging information about behavioral and psychosocial measurement tools such as research, teaching, and administration. The tool helps students, researchers, and clinicians locate tests, interviews, surveys, and questionnaires that are more relevant to their research. Doing this helps enhance the quality, reliability, and validity of their measurement techniques.
RCNi is the world's largest professional body of nurses and a publishing arm. This learning partner publishes nursing journals to inform nurses and other healthcare professionals about the latest developments in their field, including changes in their practice and research. If you are looking for print and digital research information formats, RCNi is the best place to find them.
JSTOR is a digital library that provides wide access to scholarly content, helping students and faculty connect to over 2 million primary sources across four collections. It consists of various journal articles from different disciplines, including health. Besides journals, there are books, over 2 million images, and e-books from around the world to help with nursing research.
Discover a powerful collection of behavioral, social science, and mental health research from the world’s largest resources. Created by the American Psychological Association, APA PsycINFO contains the most current resources for helping you write your nursing papers and assignments. You can access the earliest publication of any health article through features such as First Posting for journal records.
APA PsycINFO presents psychological research that experts have reviewed based on quality and relevance. After this, skilled and knowledgeable staff from APA reviewed this literature, ensuring the highest level of accuracy. Some other features of the database include:
The Web of Science (WOS) platform provides access to 21000 peer-reviewed, high-quality learning resources supporting scientific and scholarly research dating back to 1900. The resources include open-access journals, more than 205,000 conference proceedings, and 104,000 editorially selected books.
WOS consists of resources from various disciplines, including social sciences, humanities, and health. What we love most about the platform is that it allows you to find even the most technical information. This information is disclosed exclusively in patent documents. You will find research journals published across Latin America, mainland China, South Korea, the Arab world, and South Africa.
If you are looking for a high-quality and comprehensive database, EMBASE, referred to as the Excerpta Medica database, is the place for you. Published by Elsevier Science, this medical research database is a source for biomedical and pharmacological literature from 1947. It has over 22 million articles from over 7600 scientific journals in pharmacology and medicine, including approximately 2000 journals not indexed in Medline.
Most of the article journals in the EMBASE have been published in Europe. These records have been indexed using the Emtree thesaurus (86,000 terms, including MeSH) to allow for increased depth and breadth when searching for what you are looking for.
The Cochrane Library is a collection of databases containing contain high-quality, independent evidence for full-text systematic reviews that help inform healthcare decision-making. It presents two types of reviews: complete reviews and protocols. The Collaborative Review Group has prepared complete reviews. On the other hand, protocols refer to the background, objectives, and methods of reviews that are being prepared.
Cochrane Library is one of the databases that consist of OVID's Evidence-Based Medicine Reviews (EBMR). Once more, there are bidirectional links between MEDLINE and EBMR databases. This allows you to link an article review from the Cochrane Library to a MEDLINE citation or one from a MEDLINE citation to the EBMR. These databases provide links.
These resources help in synthesizing available evidence for all major clinical topics when providing patient care. This synthesis of medical knowledge helps healthcare professionals apply the best evidence when administering care.
The Nursing Reference Center is a nursing referencing tool with content that is generated from a combination of essential resources. All information in the nursing reference center covers various health conditions, diseases, patient education, drug information, continuing education, guidelines, and information on research instruments.
The clinical tool consists of an evidence-based clinical resource consisting of more than 7,000 specialized medical topics that have been written and reviewed by experts in the medical field. UpToDate provides specific and detailed answers to clinical questions as well as treatment recommendations based on high-quality medical research evidence.
Clinal Key is a clinical search engine and database that provides access to various evidence-based answers to clinical queries. Some of the information you will find from the clinical key includes:
Lexi-comp is a clinical database providing high-quality, evidence-based referential drug information to help retail pharmacists, dentists, physicians, dentists, and nurses make confidential drug information for every individual patient. This drug reference solution is highly crucial for those who are looking to connect to drug answers quickly.
If your assignment involves finding basic information about nursing topics, then there are reliable websites you can use for this. These websites are also the best places to find demographical or epidemiological data for your nursing assignment.
Some of these websites include:
NIH is the government’s website that is responsible for biomedical research. It is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the nation's medical research agency, providing basic information on health topics, medical research, and clinical trials to improve people's lives. NIH is the main Federal agency responsible for conducting and supporting medical research.
Known as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC is part of the U.S. Public Health Service of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), responsible for keeping America safe from health, safety, and security threats. Their website provides information on various health topics that the public can easily access.
Child and Family Statistics is a Federal Interagency Forum that is a collection of 23 Federal government agencies that conduct research and activities related to children and families. It provides an annual report called America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being. The report provides a summary of national indicators about child well-being and regularly monitors changes in these indicators.
WHO is an agency from the United Nations that is responsible for promoting public health. Its websites provide a range of resources covering various health issues.
Digital health provides the public access to key healthcare information such as immunizations, pathology, and diagnostic imaging reports.
Professional societies are also among the best places to find resources for your nursing assignments. Most of these societies provide information in journals, conference proceedings, and newsletters. These societies include:
Writing a good nursing paper or assignment requires that one utilizes the best resources to communicate ideas and arguments. These resources provide well-informed and evidence-based ideas that help you succeed in your nursing studies and, ultimately, in your nursing career. Use the resources every time you write a nursing assignment.
If you need help writing a nursing paper, we can help. We use the above resources to support arguments and ideas in nursing essays and papers. Reach out to us today for more information.
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