Whether you are studying child, adult or mental health nursing, the library has books, journals, and databases to suit your needs.
Welcome to our guide on Nursing resources. As the Learning and Research Librarians for Medicine, Health and Social Care, we are here to support you in your learning and assignments.
Kate Davies and Michelle Crowther, Learning & Research Librarians for Medicine, Health and Social Care
Use Library Search to find printed books and e-books. For detailed advice on how to search for a book see our books page. Additionally try browsing the core nursing book collection by looking at the shelves for classmarks 610.73 (general nursing); 610.7362 (child nursing) or 610.7368 (mental health nursing). You will find a large collection of nursing books at both Augustine House in Canterbury and the Drill Hall Library in Medway.
If you can’t get to the library, you can access the university’s e-resources via your wifi. The library has hundreds of relevant e-books which you can access by logging into your account on Library Search. Simply limit your results in the left-hand pane of the search screen to e-books and click on the link to CCCU e-book to download or read online. You’ll find we have some amazing titles such as JD Gatford and NM Phillips’s Nursing calculations and Catherine McCabe’s Communication skills for nursing practice.
The Royal Marsden Manual of Clinical Nursing Procedures. 10th ed. is available via Find Databases > A to Z.
In addition to our academic textbooks, you may wish to explore the Experts by Experience (EbE) and the Professional Reflection collection of e-books and e-audiobooks. The Experts by Experience collection includes texts written by patients/clients/carers which shed light on their illness/condition/situation from their own perspective. The Professional Reflection collection includes texts by healthcare professions which reflect on life in the sector. Visit the Learning Skills Hub module on EbE to explore the collection further and see how to access the texts on the Libby app.
Journals provide an important source of information in addition to books as they publish articles on specific topics and often present and discuss results of research or case-studies. Depending on availability, you can access printed journals in the library (in Augustine House they are located on the second floor in the silent zone - printed journals are very limited at the Drill Hall Library) and electronic versions via LibrarySearch.
You may see journal articles on your reading list – below is an example of a reference to a journal article:
Tingle, J. (2013) ‘Assessing the patient experience while attending A&E’, British Journal of Nursing , 22 (1), pp.56-57.
The above example shows that the article ‘Assessing the patient experience while attending A&E’ was published in the British Journal of Nursing . This is one of the journal titles that will be useful for you, others available via LibrarySearch include:
You may also like to access MAH Complete (formerly Internurse) through the Find Databases A-Z link on LibrarySearch. This is the site where you can access several useful UK nursing journals, such as British Journal of Community Nursing, British Journal of Mental Health Nursing, British Journal of Nursing, Journal of Wound Care and Practice Nursing. Access starts from 1992.
To make sure you are a carrying out a thorough search for your topic you should also try any/all of the following key, specialised databases. To access them use the Find Databases link on the LibrarySearch home page, find them in the A-Z list and click on the link.
British Nursing Index – The British Nursing Index indexes articles from the most popular English language nursing journals published primarily in the UK. There are approximately 220 journals indexed in this database.
CINAHL Complete – CINAHL stands for Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature. The database contains references from more than 2,900 nursing and allied health journals. CINAHL with Full Text provides full text for more than 600 journals.
Cochrane Library is for anyone interested in using high-quality information to make health decisions. Whether you are a doctor or nurse, patient or carer, researcher or funder, Cochrane evidence provides a powerful tool to enhance your healthcare knowledge and decision making.
PsycInfo – This database provides references from over 2,000 psychological, social, behavioural, and health journals. It is very useful for a mental health related topics.
SCOPUS - Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database containing both peer-reviewed research literature and quality web sources. With over 22,000 titles from more than 5,000 international publishers, Scopus offers researchers a quick, easy and comprehensive resource to support their research needs in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities.
TRIP Database - 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. A simple search for ‘infection control’ will find a range of items from patient information to primary journal literature.
Please note you will be able to access the full text of many of the articles you find when searching the databases but will not be able to read the full text of all the results you find.
To support your learning in anatomy and physiology, there are two highly visual resources available:
Acland’s Video Atlas of Human Anatomy – A site that presents video recordings of real dissected human cadaveric specimens. The specimens have not been embalmed and therefore retain the colour, texture and mobility of the living body. The recordings show real life movement and transcripts of the audio can be printed out.
Visible Body – This resource includes animated modules for anatomy and physiology. Modules accessible include the Human Anatomy Atlas, Muscle Premium, Skeleton Premium, Heart & Circulatory Premium and Physiology.
For pharmacology information, try BNF and BNFC:
British National Formulary (BNF) is a pharmaceutical reference book that contains information and advice on prescribing and pharmacology, along with specific facts and details about many medicines. Information within the BNF includes indication(s), contraindications, side effects, doses, legal classification, names and prices of available proprietary and generic formulations.
British National Formulary for Children (BNFC) is the standard UK paediatric reference for prescribing and pharmacology. It contains a wide range of information and advice on prescribing for children – from newborn to adolescence. The entries are classified by group of drug, giving cautions for use, side effects, licensed use, indications and dose of most of the drugs available for children in the UK National Health Service.
Also available in LibrarySearch is Lexis+ Newspapers UK and the Oxford English Dictionary . View the help guides for key LibrarySearch databases.
You could also try databases that are freely available on the web:
Gov.uk – use this site to find publications, consultation, policy, guidance and statistics from the Department of Health and Social Care.
MedRxiv – The pre-print server for health sciences. Preprints are preliminary reports of work that have not been certified by peer review. They should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
NIHR Centre for Reviews and Dissemination
Public Health Profiles - a useful resource for health-related statistics.
Don’t forget that if you are a member of the RCN – Royal College of Nursing you can access a number of online resources via their Library Service.
For more detailed advice see the LibrarySearch help pages and our finding information modules on the Learning Skills Hub for tips on searching for books; journals; journal articles; media resources and websites.