This guide focusses on the basic principles for performing a literature search using one of the main health databases such as Medline, Embase or Cinahl.
At St. George's, each of these databases can be searched using a specialist search tool. For example, for Medline and Embase, these databases are searched using the Ovid search tool, and for CINAHL it is the EBSCOhost search tool and for BNI, the platform used is by ProQuest. NHS staff access to databases via these platforms too but they require an OpenAthens account). This type of search can be broken down into the following stages:
Each stage is covered separately in more detail in the relevant tabs above.
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