Support using Databases
The library runs workshops for beginners and sessions covering more advanced search techniques. You will be introduced to key databases for your subject and help you use them effectively.
Check the Calendar for more information.
Database Trials
Current databases that are being trailed are highlighted in the A-Z Database list:
If you have a suggestion for a trial that you'd like the library to consider, please get in touch with your Collections Liaison Librarian.
Databases
Databases may include a variety of different resources such as journal articles, conference papers, book chapters, reports and multimedia. For a full list of databases accessible via the library please visit the A-Z Databases:
Below are some selected databases you may find relevant for Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care:
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AMED - King's This link opens in a new window AMED is a unique bibliographic database produced by the Health Care Information Service of the British Library. It covers a selection of journals in complementary medicine, palliative care, and allied professions.It is a specialised abstracts and indexing database designed for physicians, therapists, medical researchers, historians and clinicians looking to learn more about alternative and allied therapies and related subjects.Note: For help with logging in see Login instructions for popular resources for more details.
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AnatomediaPLUS This link opens in a new window Anatomedia is a comprehensive, self-paced learning program that students, teachers and practitioners can access from anywhere. Comprised of 9 interactive modules, it incorporates the latest radiology methods and research, developing knowledgeable anatomists and clinicians. Meksi, an AI powered Virtual Patient (Beta version), allows doctors and medical students to safely practice and refine clinical consultation skills. It currently focuses on chest pain and more clinical cases will be added as the tool is developed.To use this resource press the “launch” button. Please ignore institutional log-in option.
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Best Practice (BMJ) – King's This link opens in a new window Best Practice is a completely new concept for information delivered at the point of care. In a single source there is combination of the latest research evidence, guidelines and expert opinion – presented in a step-by-step approach, covering prevention, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis. Its patient-focused approach represents a major advancement in information delivery at the point of care. There is a mobile app available
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BMJ Case Reports - King's This link opens in a new window BMJ Case reports delivers a focused, peer-reviewed, valuable collection of cases in all disciplines. It is the largest single collection of case reports online where you can easily find clinically important information on common and rare conditions. King's staff and students and NHS staff may submit to this journal. Please contact nhsenquiry@kcl.ac.uk for the fellowship code.
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British Pharmacopoeia This link opens in a new window The British Pharmacopoeia (BP) is the official collection of standards for UK medicinal products and pharmaceutical substances. Since 1864, the BP has been providing authoritative standards for medicinal products and pharmaceutical substances and it continues to play an important role in the standard-setting process worldwide. The BP remains an essential reference for all individuals and organisations working within pharmaceutical research and development, manufacture and testing around the globe.Registration for a personal account is optional and only required for additional features. Please note that from 19th March 2025 all users will need to log in using King's username and password both on and off campus. More infomation can be found here
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CINAHL - King's This link opens in a new window CINAHL (The Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature) is a bibliographic database for the fields of nursing and allied health literature indexing over 5,000 journals. This database is available via the EBSCO Host service. Journals from many professional areas including therapy, rehabilitation, pharmacy and social care are also included. Useful if you study:Dental careHealth managementHealth sciencesMedicinePharmacySocial workSport and exercise sciences
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ClinicalKey Student Nursing + Midwifery This link opens in a new window ClinicalKey Student is an interactive education platform published by Elsevier. It is a leading e-learning platform that provides access to 29 midwifery titles and 81 nursing titles including textbooks, clinical summaries, high-quality images and videos. Content covers a broad range of specialities including:Advanced Practice Nursing; Anatomy and Physiology; Community Nursing; Health Promotion; Maternity Care and Women’s Health; Neonatal and Perinatal Medicine; Pharmacology/Toxicology; Psychiatric/Mental Health; Public Health ; Nursing; Research and Evidence Based Practice.
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Cochrane Library This link opens in a new window The Cochrane Library is a collection of databases that contain high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare. Collection primarily consists of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR), the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), Cochrane Clinical Answers as well as Cochrane Protocols, Editorials and Special Collections.Access to the Cochrane Library is free to NHS staff, patients and the public in the United Kingdom. For information on access from other countries see this page
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DynaMed This link opens in a new window DynaMed provided via EBSCO combines the highest quality evidence-based information, expert guidance and a user-friendly, personalized experience to deliver accurate answers fast at the point of care. Key takeaways, targeted synopses, and clearly defined recommendations maximize efficiency, reducing time to answer with information that is quickly accessible and actionable.DynaMed ensures peace of mind in the clinical decision-making process with content based on a rigorous, seven-step evidence-based methodology, robust systematic literature surveillance with daily updates, and clinical expertise that both complements and clarifies the evidence.Important note: After using the above link the new page will open - please click on “Access through your Institution” tab link to authenticate access.
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Embase - King's This link opens in a new window Embase contains over 22 million records spanning 1947-present, with over 1 million records added annually. Each record contains the full bibliographic citation, indexing terms, and codes; and 80% of all citations in Embase include author-written abstracts. The Embase journal collection is international with over 7,500 active peer-reviewed journals more than 90 countries. Updated daily and weekly. Broad biomedical scope covering the following areas:• Drug therapy and research, including pharmaceutics, pharmacology and toxicology• Clinical and experimental (human) medicine• Basic biological science relevant to human medicine• Biotechnology and biomedical engineering, including medical devices• Health policy and management, including pharmacoeconomics• Public, occupational and environmental health, including pollution control• Veterinary science, dentistry, and nursing You can access databases on the Ovid platform on campus without logging in at: https://ovidsp.ovid.com/autologin.cgi Note: For help with logging in see Login instructions for popular resources for more details.
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Epistemonikos This link opens in a new window A collaborative, multilingual database of health evidence. It is the largest source of systematic reviews relevant for health-decision making, and a large source of other types of scientific evidence.
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Evidence Search (NICE) This link opens in a new window Built around a powerful search engine, provides access to the best evidence based resources, especially good for guidelines and reviews. It also provides links to other NHS resources, such as healthcare databases, electronic journals and Specialist Collections.
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FastFacts This link opens in a new window Fast Facts address knowledge gaps in healthcare enabling a dialogue between healthcare professionals, patients and other stakeholders from the healthcare ecosystem. It provides premium content to improve medical practice and its goal is to promote health through communication with a global network of medical practitioners and patients.
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Henry Stewart Talks (Biomedical & Life Sciences Collection) This link opens in a new window A collection of lectures and presentations by leading experts in the fields of biomedicine and life sciences. Includes specific series on clinical methods, biochemistry, diseases, immunology, microbiology. The presentations consist of navigable slides with accompanying narration synchronised for ease of listening. They are all approximately 40-50 minutes long and are organised into a comprehensive series of talks.Useful if you study: BiochemistryBiologyClinical MedicinePharmacyThe Biomedical & Life Sciences Collection contains over 2,500 specially commissioned, multi-media, online lectures by leading world experts from universities, research centres, medical schools, and pharmaceutical/biotech companies. There are over 2,000 contributing editors and speakers. Subject categories include:BiochemistryCancerCell BiologyClinical PracticeGenetics & EpigeneticsImmunologyMetabolism & NutritionMethodsMicrobiologyNeurosciencePharmaceutical SciencesPhysiology & AnatomyPlant & Animal SciencesReproduction & Development
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Intermid This link opens in a new window The Intermid collection offers institutions full current issue + back file coverage of MA Healthcare’s two journals for Midwifery: British Journal of Midwifery and African Journal of Midwifery and Women’s Health.Both journals provide users with an unrivalled amount of clinical, professional and educational content on areas related to maternity services and women’s health, covering the full spectrum of midwifery from antenatal and intrapartum care to the postpartum period. In British Journal of Midwifery, you can find the relevant and up-to-date original research, evidence-based papers and clinical reviews, which aim to establish best practice in midwifery.Access starts from 1993.
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Internurse This link opens in a new window Internurse is an online archive of peer-reviewed nursing articles published by MA Healthcare UK Ltd. It draws together articles from a number of high-quality journals, including the foremost generalist clinical journal, British Journal of Nursing, and the leading journal for wound-care professionals, Journal of Wound Care.
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King's Fund Digital Archive This link opens in a new window The King's Fund has been producing publications since the turn of the 20th century. These cover areas of work that the Fund has addressed throughout its history, from hospital food and menu planning (The King's Fund, 1945) to making integrated care a reality (Ham and Walsh, 2013).There are now nearly 2,000 of these documents, most of which are held in hard copy at our information centre in central London. More than 1,000 of these have been digitised so far. In order to preserve this unique record of the philanthropic endeavours of The King's Fund and the history of the management of health and wellbeing in London and England, the Fund is digitising all of its publications since its foundation in 1897. We have already scanned about half of our publications and we aim to complete the remainder in 2015.This website gives the public access to these documents from anywhere in the world.
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Maternity and Infant Care Database (MIDIRS) This link opens in a new window Maternity and Infant Care available via Ovid is the world’s largest midwifery-specific database, and a key information resource used by maternity health care professionals and student midwives worldwide to support their research, practice and study requirements. Maternity and Infant Care indexes not only academic journals and book chapters, but a range of grey literature drawn from information sources not typically well represented in indexing databases, but vital for staying appraised of the latest developments in maternity and infant care, such as government publications, clinical guidelines, and parliamentary proceedings, as well as news items. Details of correspondence and commentary written in response to articles are also included.Maternity and Infant Care - key factsType: Bibliographic with abstractsNumber of records: 300,000 +Update frequency: Approximately 100 records are added each dayCoverage: earliest record is dated 1857, with comprehensive coverage from 1988 onwardsSubjects covered: Maternity services, midwifery profession and practice worldwide, pregnancy, labour and birth, postnatal health, and care of the infant up to six weeks, infant feeding, and more.Journal coverage: Over 400 English-language journals and other sources are indexed, including a range of grey literature. Note: For help with logging in see Login instructions for popular resources for more details.
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MedicinesComplete This link opens in a new window MedicinesComplete provides medicines information and guidance on the safe use and administration of drugs and medicines. From diagnosis, to prescribing, dispensing, and administering medications, it allows access to evidence-based support for health professionals. MedicinesComplete is updated quarterly.King's access includes the following online resources:British National Formulary (BNF)British National Formulary for Children (BNC)Critical IllnessMartindale (MRT) + ADRPalliative Care Formulary (PCF)Pharmaceutical Excipients (PEX)Stockley's Drug Interactions (STK)
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Medline - King's (On Campus) This link opens in a new window Bibliographic database of references to journal articles, with an emphasis on clinical medicine, dentistry and biomedical research. Also covers nursing, chemistry and pharmacology, biological and physical sciences, microbiology, nutrition, health care delivery and social sciences. 1946 to date. Note: For help with logging in see Login instructions for popular resources for more details.
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SCOPUS This link opens in a new window Scopus is a large multidisciplinary, bibliographic and citation database created and maintained by Elsevier. It provides access to extensive journal coverage especially in science, technology and medicine and is expanding its coverage of the social sciences. Citation coverage is back to 1996. Bibliographic coverage generally reaches further back but is variable.
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TRIP This link opens in a new window TRIP is a clinical search engine providing a single search interface to a large number of web resources, which contain high quality evidence for answering clinical questions, including journals, synopses, online textbooks and systematic reviews. As well as research evidence we also allow clinicians to search across other content types including images, videos, patient information leaflets, educational courses and news.
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UK Medical Heritage Library This link opens in a new window The UK Medical Heritage Library brings together books and pamphlets from 10 research libraries in the UK, focused on the 19th and early 20th century history of medicine and related disciplines. This ongoing digitisation project is funded by Jisc and the Wellcome Library. The UK Medical Heritage Library is a sub-set of the Medical Heritage Library (https://archive.org/details/medicalheritagelibrary). UK Medical Heritage Library.
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Web of Science (All databases) This link opens in a new window Specific log-in instructions for Web of Science can be found here.Web of Science provides access to the world’s leading scholarly literature in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities and examines proceedings of international conferences, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops, and conventions.Note: SmartSearch (AI) is now the default Basic Search. You can turn off the AI by toggling the slider at the top on the right, but you will have to do this for each session. The Advanced search page instead does not use SmartSearch AI. It is a gateway to:Science Citation Index Expanded (1900-present)Social Sciences Citation Index (1956-present)Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1975-present)Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Science (1990-present)Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Social Science & Humanities (1990-present)Emerging Sources Citation Index (2015-present) KCI-Korean Journal Database MedlineRussian Science Citation IndexSciELO Citation Index
Database Spotlight
ClinicalKey Nursing & Midwifery provides access to key texts on Midwifery and Nursing published by Elsevier. Providing access to the most recent editions, as well as multimedia and video content, ClinicalKey Nursing & Midwifery includes access to:
- Mayes' Midwifery, Fifteenth edition.
- Gatford and Philips' Drug Calculations, Tenth edition.
- Anatomy and Physiology for Midwives, Fourth edition.