Scenario 1: a student nurse using CDU library databases

Sally is a second year nursing student and has an assignment where she has to write an essay on the topic of the nursing role in caring for a patient who has hypertension.

She knows her lecturer will want at least 3 or 4 scholarly journal articles quoted or paraphrased in the essay, as well as information from nursing textbooks. She already has a couple of textbooks and finds 3 more in the library.

Sally remembers having done some basic database searching in CINAHL Plus with fulltext (in EBSCOHost) last year, so decides to have a go and see if she can find some articles for her essay.

Sally undertakes her search and checks out the first two pages of results and clicks on the PDF full text links to download the journal articles she thinks will be useful. Once she has saved the articles and read through them, she starts planning her essay.

Scenario 2: a midwifery student using Google Scholar and PubMed

Jemma is doing postgraduate midwifery studies and has to write an essay that is due in two weeks on complications in the birthing process and the midwifery care that is required for that complication. She can choose her topic area and has decided to focus on postpartum haemorrhage.

Jemma likes using Google Scholar. So she starts with a general search on the topic by just typing – postpartum haemorrhage. She finds a few useful journal articles.

She also remembers having learnt about PubMed, so also does the same search there. However, she wants to be able to access the full article, not just the abstract, so remembers to go into the Limits tab and tick the “Links to free full text” box before doing her search.

Jemma finds some additional useful information about the midwifery care of that complication in her midwifery textbooks. She starts writing some notes for her essay.

You have now finished the tutorial. Try test your skills.