Nursing

Articles are an excellent source for

• Current information and news
• Commentary and opinion
• General and/or specific information
• Scholarly research

Each article type has its strengths and weaknesses depending on your information need. 

Research Article Format

Most scientific research articles follow a specific format called IMRaD (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion). Each section has a specific role.

Introduction

• Background, purpose, and/or rationale behind the article/research
• May include a review of the literature (or a review of the literature may be its own section)
• Authors will use evidence (citations) in the background and/or review of the literature

Methods

• Study design
• Setting, Population, Sample
• Data-collection methods
  • Quantitative
  • Qualitative
  • Mixed Methods
• Authors may use references if the methods are from previous experiments

Results

• Presentation of the data collected
  • text in paragraph format
  • figures and tables

Discussion

• Discussion/Conclusion based on the results of the study
• Results are placed into context and interpreted by the authors
• Authors discuss if the question was answered and the possibilities for future research
• Authors will use evidence to relate the findings to previous research

These are the best databases at Bradley University to find articles on nursing and health science topics.

These are additional databases that have nursing and health science articles

Below is a list of (and link to) the top journals publishing nursing articles. 

American Nurses Association Publications

Google Scholar is a useful way to do a broad search and see what's available on your topic. However, it doesn't directly provide access to the full-text of articles, and you will often hit paywalls.

It's possible to configure Google Scholar so that you can use it to search, but then use the Library's databases to access full text when it's available. You'll see a "Get It @ Bradley" link to the right of your results when this option is available. The handout linked below shows the steps to set this up in Google Scholar.