Welcome to your library subject page. This has been compiled by your subject librarian and is here to help you find information for your studies and research. It is not an exhaustive list of everything available, but will point you in the right direction.
Check out the Library Services page for opening hours and information about all our services and resources. The Distance Learners page provides information on accessing resources whilst away from campus and below you will find pointers on the most useful information sources for your studies.
OneSearch is a good place to start your research. However as you progress through your course you will need to develop your searching skills to incorporate other sources.
Watch the tutorial below for an introduction to searching or access our Finding Information page for more advice.
Click on the image above or use this link to view the tutorial: How to search tutorial
You can also sign up to our webinar for guidance on how you can develop your search skills.
We have selected some key eresources and individual journal titles to help you locate relevant material for your subject.
Use our eresources to search for relevant journal articles or other resources such as anatomy images. Although OneSearch does search many of these, using the subject specific collections will produce more tailored results and provide more relevant filters. Eresources for health is an online tutorial to help you use these resources.
In addition to these key full-text eresources you can also explore our full A-Z of eresources to see the whole list and see the Research pages for additional research specific resources.
Proquest Nursing and Allied health
| Eresource | Description | |
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Anatomy TV | An Interactive 3D anatomy resource. Rotate the body, navigate through the layers and click on the image to bring up the relevant text. |
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Instant Anatomy | Diagrams, videos, podcasts and revision questions to help you get to grips with anatomy. |
| Midwifery and health specific | ||
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Cinahl |
The key collection for Nursing and Allied health. It indexes (citations only) over 4000 journals and holds the full-text of 760 journals, plus linking to our other subscribed content. You will get fewer results than OneSearch but they should be more relevant. |
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ScienceDirect | More medical/science based but does include several Midwifery journals so this is a key collection for you to use. |
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MEDLINE | MEDLINE is the U.S. National Library of Medicine journal citation database covering medicine, nursing, the health care system and much more. This version includes citations from 5,200 scholarly journals and full-text from more than 1,450. It forms part of PubMed which searches wider but doesn't provide full-text. |
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PubMed | Free search engine from the US National Library of Medicine. Searches MedLine plus additional content. This is now more usable because you can Download LibKey Nomad, which will link you to the University of Cumbria's full-text content. |
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Proquest nursing and Allied health | One of several collections from Proquest, all of which together form Proquest Central. This particular collection indexes 850 journals and holds the full-text of 715 Nursing and Allied health titles. More information in Getting started with Proquest databases. |
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Cochrane Library | Provides systematic reviews of clinical based research on the effectiveness of specific interventions. It will depend on your topic as to whether there will be a relevant review but if there is, it will be a key resource. Cochrane also runs a blog Evidence for everyday midwifery, which pulls together reviews into a more digestible format. |
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Matflix |
Video collection from the Maternity and Midwifery Forum, covering the key issues facing midwifery and maternity professionals. The videos are curated into box sets around a particular theme by Jenny Hall. Each box set includes additional resources and reflective prompts, in addition to the videos. |
| Wider and multi-disciplinary | ||
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PsycARTICLES | Full-text articles from 59 Psychology journals. |
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Academic Search Complete | A huge multi-disciplinary database which indexes (citations only) over 9,500 journals and provides full-text to over 6,500. Good for a search on more general topics. |
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Proquest Central | Pulls together many of the Proquest collections, searching thousands of journals across many subjects. More information in . |
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Sage Journals | Whereas the collections above hold content from a number of publishers this collection holds 900 full-text peer reviewed journals published by Sage. Other publisher collections are available but this one has the most relevant full-text journals. |
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Community Care Inform | Dsigned for Social workers there is an Adult and child section. Useful for helping to understand the legal aspects |
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Dissertation collection | Global collection with some full-text from 1997 onwards. It is possible to limit by level e.g. MSc. To access UoC undergrad dissertations go to Collections in OneSearch |
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Refworks | Refworks is used to collect and manage your sources. It will also create your Reference list (Bibliography) in the Referencing style of your choice. Download the guide to using Proquest Refworks |
Browse or search inside key journal titles for Midwifery below. There are many others but most of these are and a good starting point. For a full range of titles check our A-Z of journals via Journals Search.
| Journal | Description | |
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BJOG (British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology) | Journal from the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology |
| British Journal of Midwifery | Written by midwives for midwives this journal keeps you up to date with latest developments in clinical practice. | |
| Midwifery | International, peer reviewed journal publishing the latest research to inform the safety, quality, outcomes and experiences of pregnancy, birth and maternity care. | |
| Evidence Based Midwifery | Academic journal from the RCM. Examining the evidence for practice. Only published twice a year. | |
| International Journal of Childbirth Education | Quarterly journal focusing on research, practice and policy in family-centered maternity and newborn care. |
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| MIDIRS Midwifery Digest | Brings together news, reviews, original articles and reprints of the best midwifery information from selected journals, books and conference papers. |
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| Midwifery Matters | Journal from the Association of Radical Midwives committed to improving maternity services. | |
| Midwives | of the Royal College of Midwives. Keeping you up to date with current issues in midwifery. | |
| The Practising Midwife | Online in Cinahl 2013-2023 but now only available in print from the Carlisle and Lancaster campus libraries. NB. You will need to follow the link from the University to get access, going directly to the A4maternity site and trying to log in there, won't work. |
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Most hospitals will have a Library or Education centre. You are entitled to join as either a student on placement there or as a member of staff (includes bank staff). This will give you access to their print books and you can also request an Open Athens account. If you are on placement at the hospital you may be offered an introductory session by the library (Education centre). We recommend that you attend so that you can take full benefit of the additional resources that the NHS provides. If this doesn't happen, visit the library and ask to be signed up. You can find a list of NHS libraries here.
Similar to OneSearch this hub searches the NHS core collection of library resources and also gives quick access to NICE guidelines and BMJ best practice. It provides access to some collections that the University does not subscribe to, such as the British Nursing Index and Embase, as well as some we do, such as CINAHL. These are the resources that you will have access to in your professional career so it is a good idea to get familiar with them now.
You will need an OpenAthens account to view the full-text, search individual collections or access full-text. This is different to the University which uses something called Shibboleth or Institutional access.
A suite of online tutorials provided by Health Education England, supporting every aspect of healthcare. You can access some modules with a free registration but for them to count towards your CPD you need to log in with Open Athens.
See the guide on how to set up a free account e-LfH account creation.
Two new courses from the e-LfH - Literature searching and Critical Appraisal
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Department of Health and Social Care | The Government Department website. Access Guidance, Policy papers and statistics |
| Royal College of Midwives (RCM) | Support and information for all midwives. | |
| The regulatory body for Midwifery. Find Standards and guidance. | ||
| NICE provides guidance and advice on health and social care. Use the site to access Clinical Knowledge Summaries, guidance, standards and the BNF | ||
| Information for Obstetricians including Guidelines |
| Supporting Organisations | ||
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MIDIRS | MIDIRS supplies vital education and practice development resources to assist midwives and student midwives in their practice and studies |
| AIMS | Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services. Information on pregnancy and childbirth care - campaigning for parents and professionals in the UK and Ireland | |
| Multiple birth Foundation supports parents and professionals caring for multiple birth families | ||
| The UK's largest charity for parents. Provides support, information & training to parents, families & health professionals. | ||
| UK charity providing support for bereaved parents and their families. | ||
| a UK charity and network of over 125 organisations, dedicated to ensuring women and families affected by perinatal mental health problems have access to high-quality, compassionate care. | ||
| Birth Facts was created by an independent researcher with a background in empirical scientific and social scientific research. They pull together the evidence to support women's informed choice. | ||
| Evidence-based information and critical appraisal | ||
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| Provides resources and background information for healthcare professionals, with Critical Appraisal tools and educational material to download. | ||
| Helps you to find and interpret the best available evidence from health research by providing some useful checklists. | ||
| Appraises research to identify the most reliable, relevant and significant findings to support the NHS. It disseminates these findings as Signals (The latest important research, summarised), Highlights (Conditions, treatments and issues explored using NIHR evidence) and Themed reviews. | ||
| A search tool designed to allow health professionals to rapidly identify the highest quality clinical evidence for clinical practice. | ||
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Critically appraising the evidence base
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Online course from the NHS e-Library for Health. Designed to enable the healthcare workforce (clinical and non-clinical) to build confidence in the critical appraisal process when applying and evaluating research. | |
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Race, which is social construct is often confused with genetic ancestry in published literature about health. Ramona challenges this and the fact that ethnic minorities are under represented in health research. She has created a Tool to help you identify this bias. |
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| Health data and statistics | ||
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Office for National Statistics | Government statistics and reports including Heath and Social Care the census |
| Centralised collection of social research data for the UK including Access to key surveys such as the Health Survey England and the Continuous Household survey | ||
| WHO site pulling together global health data. | ||
| Other useful sites | ||
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NHS Acronym buster
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Maternity services: research can improve safety and quality of care |
Collection from the National Institute of Health and care research (NIHR) |
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| People talk about their experiences of health and illness | ||
| Grey Literature covers all types of government and organisational documents: conference papers, policy documents, patient leaflets, blogs and more. The definition is that it isn't peer reviewed and is published by an organisation/body whose primary objective isn’t making money from publishing. Now that much more is held digitally and archived it is getting easier to find but can still be tricky. This site collects useful sources of Grey literature for health. | ||
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Covid resources |
RCM - Coronavirus advice page https://www.rcm.org.uk/coronavirus/ e-Learning for Healthcare have created an online training resources for NHS and social care staff https://www.e-lfh.org.uk/programmes/coronavirus/ |
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| Help and Advice | Link | |
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If you are experiencing any problems accessing eresources, check our troubleshooting guide for advice. |
Accessing Online Resources |
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If you are experiencing problems logging into a resource, try resetting your university password using the MFA Password Reset Tool. If the problem persists, please contact the IT Service Desk (itservicedesk@cumbria.ac.uk). |
MFA Password Reset |
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The Student Enquiry Point is a new, simpler way to contact Student Services. Using the Student Enquiry Point tile on the Student Hub you can submit an enquiry relating to the wide range of services provided by Student Services. | Student Hub |
