Database Tutorials

Ovid Nursing

About 

Ovid is an excellent resource for nurses, in particular because we have set it up so that you are only searching through what we have full-text, and it only houses nursing journals.

Be careful searching through Ovid, though, because many of these nursing journals are not scholarly, peer-reviewed journals - they are trade journals, meaning they're written by nurses, but they're not generally describing a study done and they don't go through the same peer-review process. So be sure to ask your professors if these articles are appropriate for the assignment.

Searching

Basic Searching

You will automatically be brought to the Basic Searching page if you get to Ovid from anywhere on our websites. If you're just looking to browse articles on your topic without much concern for specificity, you may want to use the Basic Search function. The Basic Search page looks like this:

From here, type in your search term into the box.

Directly below the search box, you can choose to include multimedia, as well as articles with related terms (this box is checked by default).

You can limit your search by:

• Articles with abstracts
• Articles with graphics
• Nursing (you don't need to click this one, you're already only searching through nursing articles)
• Original Articles
• Review Articles
• Year Published

When you're ready, hit the blue "Search" button! Your results will appear directly below the search box.

"Multi-Field" Searching

If you want to do an advanced search, do NOT click on the "advanced search" tab! This is exactly the same search box as the Basic Search. 

INSTEAD, click on "Multi-Field Searching", and you'll see a page that looks like this:

• In order to search by author’s name, title, subject term, etc., use the dropdown menu by the search box to select the appropriate field.
  • If you do not choose an option from this menu, the database will automatically search your term in all the article citation fields (including abstract)
• To broaden or narrow your search results, use the ‘AND’ dropdown menus before the 2nd and 3rd text boxes
  • There will be three options: AND (which is automatically chosen), OR, & NOT
  • AND: will only display results that include both/all the search terms
  • OR: will display all results with either/any of the search terms
  • NOT: will display results with the previous search terms, but will leave out results that include the following search term
• If you need more than the three provided text boxes for search terms, click the "Add a Row" link (to the bottom right of the search boxes) and use as normal
• Click on the little triangle next to "Limits" at the bottom of the page to filter your results:
  • You can limit by Articles with abstracts, Articles with graphics, Nursing (you don't need to click this one, you're already only searching through nursing articles), Original Articles, Review Articles, Year Published
  • Check the boxes or click the options in the lists that you would like to limit by
• When you are ready, click the blue "Search" button

Searching Tips!

• Not sure which word ending to use?
  • Attach an * to the base of your term, and the database will search for words that start with that string of letter, regardless of what the ending is.
  • Example: searching for poli* will pull results for policy, politics, political, politicians, etc.
  • You can see up above that I used one at the end of "feminis*" so I would get results for both "feminist" and "feminism", but not things like "feminine", which is missing the "s".
• Want to search for an entire phrase? 
  • Surround your phrase with " ", and the database will search for those words in that order without anything in between
  • Example: "critical feminist theory" will return results JUST with those exact words in that exact order. So you won't get results that are something along the lines of "Feminists are critical of X theory".

Reading Results and Articles

Results

Once you've hit search, scroll down a little and your screen will look something like this:

Results are in the center of the page, with each article being separated by a thin gray line. Without even clicking into the article you can see the citation information read the abstract (if available), download the article PDF, or save it into a folder (if you're logged in with a personal account).

To see the full article without downloading it, click on the blue title of the article you'd like to read.

To limit and modify your results, use the categories on the left (outlined in red above).

Articles

All of the articles in Ovid are full-text, so you don't have to worry about using Interlibrary Loan here! To read the full article, click on the blue linked title. You page will look like this:

To download this article:

• Click the "Article as PDF" button at the top right for full text (first link under Tools)

To email, print, or save your article, use the labeled links on the right side of the page.

At the very top of the page is a picture of the journal followed by citation information like journal/publication, volume, date published, page numbers. Copyright information is also in this part of the page.

The title is in large bolded letter below the citation information. The author name(s) appear directly below the title.

Below the title and author names is the abstract (if available), and then the full article

Use the "Find Citing Articles" and "Find Similar Articles" to see more articles about the same topic. Citing articles are articles that use the one you've found as a reference, and similar articles are articles about related topics.

More Help from Ovid: