Bachelor of Paramedicine: Searching Databases

Locating Health and Medical Literature

You can find journal articles online via Library search or via Library databases. A Database is a search engine for journal articles. One database may search hundreds of individual journal titles. Some databases include journals from a range of subject areas and some are subject specific, including only  journals covering  a particular discipline,  such as health.

 View the videos on this page to learn how to search for journal articles on a topic using Library search or Library databases.

To see a full list of databases  relevant to your studies in paramedicine go to  the library homepage, click on 'Databases A-Z', scroll down to 'All subjects' and click on the 'Paramedic sciences' link

Key databases

Anatomy.TV

Modules include 3D Atlas, 3D Real-time, Anatomy & Physiology, Functional Anatomy - including sport injuries shoulder and knee, Therapy - including Hand therapy, Massage & Manual Therapies, Quizzes and Activities, Perceptual and Adaptive Learning Modules, and Clinical Specialities - Speech Language Pathology.

AccessEmergency Medicine

This online emergency medicine resource provides quick diagnosis and treatment answers for a broad spectrum of complaints encountered in the ED, ranging from neurologic and pediatric emergencies, to poisoning and trauma – specifically designed for optimized viewing on any device.

Cochrane Library

Includes six databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making, as well as information about Cochrane groups.

Health & Medical Collection

Combines clinical research titles in ProQuest Medical Library with consumer and health administration titles. Also includes charts, diagrams, graphs, tables, and photos relevant to medical research. The journals cover clinical and healthcare disciplines. Subject coverage includes anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, biomedicine, microbiology, immunology, nervous system, pharmacology, psychiatry, and dermatology. Search results can be limited to full-text and peer-reviewed articles.

CINAHL Complete

Provides full text and covers nursing, biomedicine, health sciences librarianship, alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health and 17 allied health disciplines. In addition, this database offers access to health care books, nursing dissertations, selected conference proceedings, standards of practice, educational software, audiovisuals and book chapters.

 

MEDLINE with Full-Text is a tool for medical research providing full text for top-tier medical journals. These top journals cover a wide range of subjects within the biomedical and health fields containing information needed by doctors, nurses, health professionals, and researchers engaged in clinical care, public health and health policy development.

PubMed, a service of the National Library of Medicine, includes citations for biomedical articles back to the 1950's. These citations are from MEDLINE and additional life science journals. PubMed includes links to many sites providing full-text articles and other related resources.


The VU Library subscribes to many medical and health databases on the ProQuest One Academic platform. When you access the ProQuest database, you are automatically searching multiple databases' content simultaneously. This includes journals, videos, eBooks and dissertations. You can also focus your search on the specific database using the Databases link on the top menu. 

The following are some of the databases from ProQuest Central you might consult:

Health & Medical Collection

Nursing & Allied Health Database

Public Health Database

ScienceDirect is Elsevier's leading platform of peer-reviewed scholarly literature. It is an extensive database of scientific, technical, and medical research with a wide variety of features and content. ScienceDirect contains many peer-reviewed journals with full-text content. You can view, print and download full-text articles. This database covers areas in science, technology, medicine, the social sciences and business.