Top Recommended Databases

SearchUSA is the USAHS library’s unified search engine that pulls results from all of our library’s subscribed databases and resources in one place. While it offers a convenient way to explore a wide range of materials quickly, it has some limitations. For more in-depth or specialized searches, using individual databases directly can provide better results and more advanced search options. This guide will show you some of our top recommended databases! 

PubMed is a free, public citation and absract database from the National Institute of Health and the National Library of Medicine. "PubMed comprises more than 30 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites."

Accessing PubMed through the links in this guide or from our Databases page will automatically connect PubMed to our library, allowing you to check if we have full text access to articles. When you open the abstract page of an article, you will see the USAHS Full Text Access button in the top right. Clicking on that will either take you to the full text of the article or a link to a form where you can request the article through interlibrary loan. Watch the video tutorials on this page for further information on accessing full text articles through PubMed.

MeSH stands for Medical Subject Headings. MeSH searching is a form of advanced searching in PubMed that uses PubMed's controlled vocabulary to "speak the same language" as PubMed. MeSH searching is often not necessary, but could be useful if your keyword search is producing way too many results that don't seem relevant. Watch this this video tutorial to learn how to do a MeSH search in PubMed.

ProQuest Central: Search of a variety of databases from ProQuest, including the Education Database, Family Health Database, Health & Medical Collection, Health Management Database, Nursing & Allied Health Database, and Public Health Database.

ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global: Simplifies searching for dissertations and theses via a single access point to explore an extensive, trusted collection of 4 million graduate works, with 2 million in full text.

CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature) is a comprehensive database providing access to a wide range of scholarly articles, research, and evidence-based resources in nursing and allied health fields.