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Midwifery: Databases

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Databases provide access to high-quality peer-reviewed journal articles, conference proceedings, book chapters, dissertations and many other resources. 

These databases have been especially selected for this subject area. When carrying out your research for a piece of work, you will need to search more than one database to find all of the journal articles relevant to your topic, as each database covers different journal titles.

Database Spotlight

Maternity & Infant Care Database Logo

Maternity and Infant Care Database (MIDIRS)

The Maternity and Infant Care Database from the Midwives Information and Resource Service (MIDIRS) is an important essential resource for academics and healthcare professionals involved in the care of women and infants. This unique database contains over 270,000 bibliographic references with abstracts to articles from over 400 international English language journals, books, guidelines and grey literature relating to the midwifery profession, pregnancy, labor, birth, postnatal care, infant feeding and neonatal care up to the second year of an infant’s life, and the transition to parenthood.

Maternity and Infant Care Database coverage is from 1971 and approximately 1000 records are added to the database per month. The database also includes correspondence and commentary written in response to an article. Many of the records are assigned to one or more of 570 standard searches on key topics in order to provide fast retrieval, using either a code or a browsable index of topics. Key topics include: Antenatal health issues; Hospital policies; Childbirth education; Infant feeding; Complementary therapies; International maternity; Employment issues; Neonatal care and intensive care; Ethical and professional issues; Screening; Health education; Social and psychological aspects; Healthcare professionals role; Sudden infant death and infant mortality; HIV.

The Maternity and Infant Care Database represents a powerful research tool for users around the world. Journals indexed in the database are international from the USA and Canada, Europe, Australia/New Zealand, UK, Africa and the Middle East. In addition grey literature is covered such as pamphlets, reports, web journals, press releases, newspaper articles and chapters in books. (Provided by Publisher).

Essential databases

The following are important databases for this subject area, however if you don't see what you're looking for, please go to the Database Directory for Midwifery to browse a wider selection.

 

  • CINAHL Plus Essential
    CINAHL Plus provides indexing for 3,802 journals from the fields of nursing and allied health back to 1937. It covers English-language journals and other publications on nursing, biomedicine, health sciences librarianship, alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health and other allied health disciplines. In addition to journals, the database covers health care books, nursing dissertations, selected conference proceedings, standards of practice, educational software, audiovisual materials and Evidence-Based Care Sheets. Full text material includes nearly 80 journals plus legal cases, clinical innovations, critical paths, drug records, research instruments and clinical trials. The service also includes the Pre-CINAHL dataset. This provides basic bibliographic information about journal articles before they are indexed with CINAHL headings and serves as a current awareness service.
  • PubMed central : an archive of life science journals. Essential
    PubMed is a free internet service developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the National Library of Medicine. This database provides access to citations from biomedical literature from a range of sources, including Medline records from 1950 - present.
  • Embase Essential
    Embase (Excerpta Medica Database) is a biomedical and pharmacological database produced by Elsevier B.V., containing more than 30 million records including articles from more than 8,500 journals published world-wide. It contains bibliographic records with citations, abstracts and indexing derived from biomedical articles in peer reviewed journals, and is especially strong in its coverage of drug and pharmaceutical research, pharmacology and toxicology. Embase adds over 1 million records annually; the original Embase part of the databases contains ca. 20 million records, spanning from 1974 to present, from 6,100 journals. The MEDLINE supplement contains ca. 10 million records from 2,400 journals, with unique records from MEDLINE. Weekly average updates of 4.5K Articles in Press and 11K In Process records on Embase, part of the delivered In Process records overwrite the AiPs. Embase (Fully-indexed) will average 17K records per week. Over the past year Elsevier has processed 350K Conference records, on average 6.8K records per week. Each record contains the full bibliographic citation, indexing terms, and codes; and 80% of all citations in Embase include author-written abstracts. The Embase journal collection is international with peer-reviewed journals from more than 90 countries. Coverage focuses on the following core topics (with significant overlap between topics) representing over 70% of Embase content: Pharmacology and toxicology; General clinical medicine; Genetics, biochemistry & molecular biology; Neurology & behavioral medicine; Microbiology & infectious disease; Cardiology & hematology; Psychiatry & mental health; Oncology; Healthcare policy & management; Allergy & immunology; Pediatrics; Endocrinology & metabolism; Obstetrics & gynecology; Biomedical engineering & medical devices; Anesthesiology & intensive care; Gastroenterology; Respiratory medicine; Nephrology & urology; Dermatology; Geriatrics & gerontology.
  • PsycInfo Essential
    APA PsycInfo is an electronic bibliographic database providing abstracts and citations to the scholarly literature in the psychological, social, behavioral, and health sciences. The database includes material of relevance to psychologists and professionals in related fields such as psychiatry, management, business, education, social science, neuroscience, law, medicine, and social work. Updated weekly, APA PsycInfo provides access to journal articles, books, chapters, and dissertations.
    About 99% of the journals in the database are peer-reviewed, dating from the early 1800s to the present. Nearly 80% of the database contains journal records that are accepted for coverage if archival, scholarly, peer-reviewed, and regularly published with titles, abstracts, and keywords in English. 30% of the database contains material of European origin, while an additional 12% of the database is from US dissertations.
  • Medline Essential
    MEDLINE is a bibliographic database produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. The database contains millions of citations, derived from thousands of biomedical and life science journals, and indexed with Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) from the NLM controlled vocabulary. Extending back to 1946, annual input now exceeds 700,000 citations. Updated daily, MEDLINE offers novice and expert searchers seamless and up-to-the-minute access to over 23 million of the latest bibliographic citations and author abstracts from more than 5,600 biomedicine and life sciences journals in nearly 40 languages (60 languages for older journals). English abstracts are included in more than 80% of the records.
  • Scopus Essential
    Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, features smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research. Scopus delivers an overview of the world's research output in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities. As research becomes increasingly global, interdisciplinary and collaborative, you can make sure that critical research from around the world is not missed.

Key database categories

Follow the links below to browse databases for specific types of resources.

Database Directory

You can use our Database Directory to browse a broader range of databases that are relevant to Midwifery as well as other subjects. The directory also allows you to identify databases that provide access to specific types of resources (e.g. Full Text Articles, Streaming Video, Patents, Theses and Dissertations, and much more).

Database Directory Midwifery

Research at the University of Manchester

The University of Manchester's research is internationally recognised. Go to Research Explorer, Manchester's research database, to discover the breadth of research produced by staff across the University.

Browse research publications from the Division of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work (please note: whilst many of the publications listed are available to access/Open Access, some records are for forthcoming titles awaiting publication).

 

Research Explorer Search Interface

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