Access to databases

The Cochrane Library is the primary resource for evidence on the effectiveness of interventions in health care.  It contains the full text of Cochrane Systematic Reviews, information about other systematic reviews and references to good quality controlled trials. The Cochrane Library includes:

• Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
• Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL)
• Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE)
• Health Technology Assessment Database (HTA)
• NHS Economic Evaluation Database (NHS EED)

The Cochrane Library is published by Wiley and can be accessed in the UK and certain other countries here.

For guides to searching the database, click here or here.

The  Evidence in Health and Social Care collection, part of NHS Evidence, draws together high quality, evidence-based resources, including aspects of women's health. Most resources on the site are freely accessible although some may require an NHS England username and password.

Search the whole database, or browse by topic. Topics covered include Antenatal care, Cervical Cancer, Dysmenorrhoea and Urinary incontinence

The King's Fund Database is the online catalogue for the Information and Library service of The King's Fund and is freely available for use.

The database includes publications on policy and management of health and social care services; and does not cover clinical issues and treatments. All The King’s Fund publications from 1906 onwards are included, with other publications from 1979 to present.

Maternity & Infant Care is a database which specialises in literature about pregnancy, labour, birth and neonatal care.  It covers around 550 journal titles plus books and grey literature in the field with records dating back to the 1970s.

Maternity & Infant Care is a subscription-only database.

Medline is the foremost resource for information about biomedical journal articles.  It covers around 4,000 journal titles in the pre-clinical sciences, the medical specialties, nursing, midwifery, psychology and some veterinary science.  Brief details are given for articles published from 1946 with links to full text where available.

Medline is available to everyone as PubMed. A tutorial for using this database can be found here.

POPLINE^® (POPulation information onLINE) is a freely available database on reproductive health. It contains nearly 370,000 records with abstracts to scientific articles, reports, books, and unpublished reports in the field of population, family planning, and related health issues. The majority of items are published from 1970 to the present, however, there are selected citations dating back to 1827.

In addition to free text searching, the database can be searched by keywords from the POPLINE Thesaurus , a controlled vocabulary of 2,400+ terms used to index documents in the database.

POPLINE's special features include links to free, fulltext documents; the ability to limit your search to peer-reviewed journal articles; RSS feeds for topical searches; and many abstracts in French and Spanish.

The WHO Reproductive Health Library is a resource which highlights the best Cochrane systematic reviews in sexual and reproductive health and provides commentaries and practical actions, especially for clinicians working in developing countries.

This is an up-to-date, freely available online library of transfusion-related systematic reviews and handsearched randomised controlled trials which is fully searchable by index terms as well as by free text, title, author, date and study type. In January 2012 the Library contains over 2,200 references (and links) to systematic reviews and randomised controlled trials published between 1960 and the present, and is updated monthly.

The TRIP (Turning Research into Practice) Database provides a searchable index of evidence-based health resources.