How to literature search for ARTICLES ON A SUBJECT (Databases)
How to search for EVIDENCE and BEST PRACTICE on a topic (Evidence Summaries)
How to find FULLTEXT OF A SPECIFIC ARTICLE
How to find PRINT + ELECTRONIC BOOKS (SWIMS Catalogue)
How to KEEP UP-TO-DATE WITH NEW CONTENT (CURRENT AWARENESS)
This site is maintained and hosted by the lead library for SCAS Discovery Library, Derriford Hospital, Plymouth. Contact here
NEW CONTENT
16/03/2023 New edition Issue 99 of the SCAS version of the national Prehospital Emergency Services Current Awareness Update
20/02/2023 New ebook content added
100 Cases in Acute Medicine
Advanced Assessment : Interpreting Findings and Formulating Differential Diagnoses
Clinical Assessment
Drugs Easily Explained
Grief on the Front Lines : Reckoning with Trauma, Grief, and Humanity in Modern Medicine
Leadership Challenge : How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations
Management of Portfolios, Programmes and Projects : A practical guide for leaders and decision-makers
Patient-Reported Outcomes and Experience : Measuring What We Want from PROMs and PREMs
Pocket Evidence Based Medicine : A Survival Guide for Clinicians and Students
Pocket Tutor Emergency Imaging
Note you will need a local NHS Athens account to access (register here)
21/12/2022 New ebook content added
Ambulance Care Clinical Skills
Note you will need a local NHS Athens account to access (register here)
13/12/2022 New ebook content added
Complex Breathlessness
Essentials of Anatomy and Physiology
Eureka: Physiology
SAGES Manual of Quality, Outcomes and Patient Safety
Traumatic Brain Injury : Science, Practice, Evidence and Ethics
Note you will need a local NHS Athens account to access (register here)
How to literature search for ARTICLES ON A SUBJECT

You can request literature searching and general subject enquiry services via the national service.
If you need an training on the use of resources please contact Discovery Library.
You can also undertake How to Search the Literature Effectively elearning modules – you will need an NHS Athens account to access.
- Search the NHS England subscribed healthcare databases :
AMED (via Ovid)– allied and complementary medicine including palliative care
BNI (via Proquest)– nursing, midwifery and community healthcare
CINAHL Complete (via Ebsco)– nursing and allied health~
Embase (via Ovid) – biomedical and pharmaceutical literature
Emcare (via Ovid) – nursing and allied health
Health Business Elite (via Ebsco) – healthcare administration and management
HMIC (via Ovid) – healthcare management
Medline (via Ovid) -biomedical, life sciences, allied health and pre-clinical sciences literature
Medline Complete (Via Ebsco) -biomedical, life sciences, allied health and pre-clinical sciences literature
PsycINFO (via Proquest) – psychological, social, behavioral sciences.
Social Policy and Practice (via Ovid)- health and social care
To access the NHS subscribed databases you will need an NHS Athens account.
- Search Cochrane Library
Collection of databases incl:
-Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
-Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL)
–Cochrane Clinical Answers
that can be searched simultaneously and contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making

- Search PubMed link for SCAS
Free resource which contains more than 33 million citations and abstracts of biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
The above link includes a local organisation logo on the right-hand side of each record. Clicking the logo will check article availability or offer a request form.
To access the content linked you will need an NHS Athens account.

- Search NHS Library and Knowledge Hub (Guide)
Whilst it is advisable to search the databases above for more detailed and systematic searches, the NHS Knowledge and Library Hub can be used for more simple searches to find a couple of papers on a simple topic.
To access content on the Library and Knowledge Hub you will need an NHS Athens account.
How to search for EVIDENCE and BEST PRACTICE on a topic
A range of evidence-based and other resources available to help inform patient care or support your study including:
BMJ Best Practice- (Help and training resources)
Evidence-based research, guidelines and expert opinion offering step-by-step guidance on diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and prevention.
On 1st access you’ll be asked to create personal account to download free App**
***Note you will need a local NHS Athens account (register here).
ClinicalKey–
Clinical insight search tool which also gives access to over 1100 electronic books and 500 journals and other fulltext resources
Note you will need a local NHS Athens account (register here)
Clinical Knowledge Summaries (provided by NICE)-
Summaries of the current evidence base & practical guidance on best practice for >300 primary care presentations and regular updates to all topics
Trip Pro Database
clinical search tool designed to allow health professionals to rapidly identify the highest quality clinical evidence for clinical practice.
How to find FULLTEXT OF A SPECIFIC ARTICLE
To access articles you will need a NHS Athens account.
TO SEARCH FOR AVAILABILITY OF ARTICLES USE THE FOLLOWING OPTIONS:
- The ARTICLE TITLE via the Knowledge and Library Hub (Guide)
If you have the article title please copy and paste into the main search box of the hub.
If the title is a short title using common healthcare terms, then you might want to add the Author name and/or Journal title to the search to specify your chosen article.

- The DIGITAL OBJECT IDENTIFIER (DOI) or PUBMED ID (PMID) via LibKey
– A Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is a string of numbers, letters and symbols used to permanently identify an article or document and link to it on the web.
It is usually in the format:
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05043-y
The bit in italics which starts all DOIs can be ignored- please copy and paste the rest of your specific into the search box.
– A PubMed identifier (PMID) is a unique value assigned to each PubMed record usually 8 digits long

- The JOURNAL TITLE using Browzine
The search only includes journals for which organisation has a subscription.
If a journal is embargoed the embargoed article will still be listed but when you click to access content you will receive a article request form rather than the fulltext.

- BROWSER EXTENSION to check all scholarly pages for SCAS access via LibkeyNomad
You will need to download the browser extension to browsers utilised on all devices you wish to use it on
Enter South Central Ambulance as organisation when asked.

Selected Prehospital and Emergency Medicine journals below
If we don’t hold your required article you may make an article request via the national library service
Journal | Coverage | Notes |
Academic Emergency Medicine | 1997- | |
Air Medical Journal | 2007- | |
American Journal of Emergency Medicine | 2007- | |
Annals of Emergency Medicine | 2007- | |
BMJ | 1840- | |
British Journal of Healthcare Assistants | 2018- | |
British Paramedic Journal | 2016- | |
Clinical Teacher | 2004- | |
Disaster & Military Medicine | 2015- | |
Emergency Medicine Australasia | 2005- | |
Emergency Medicine Clinics of North America | 2007- | |
Emergency Medicine Journal (EMJ) | 1984- | |
Health Services Research | 2002- | |
Injury | 2007- | |
International Paramedic Practice | 2018- | |
Journal of Emergency Medicine | 2007- | |
Journal of Paramedic Practice | 2008- | |
Prehospital Emergency Care | 1997- | 16/03/2023 Not currently giving access for 2022-23 articles. Reported to supplier. Please email library.mailbox@nhs.net if you need an article from these years |
Resuscitation | 2007- | |
Visual Journal of Emergency Medicine | 2015- |
How to find ELECTRONIC BOOKS
**List of Prehospital practice, research & education ebooks available to SCAS**
Access to Ross and Wilson anatomy and physiology in health and illness
Access to Nancy Caroline’s Emergency Care in the Streets
All ebooks require NHS Athens account (register here).
Additional ebooks available via:

This is a regional NHS catalogue, so you need to restrict search to location:
-South Central Ambulance Service SCAS
You will need an NHS Athens login to to access ebooks.
All ebooks require NHS Athens account (register here).
How to KEEP UP-TO-DATE WITH NEW CONTENT (CURRENT AWARENESS)
You may find the following useful for keeping up-to-date.
- Prehospital Emergency Services Current Awareness Update (locally edited SCAS version with relevant fulltext links)
Provides a digest of information supporting evidence based practice in pre-hospital, ambulance and emergency services incl. recent research, news and policy items, and relevant reports. Update is commissioned by the National Ambulance Research Steering Group.
- KnowledgeShare – sign up for targeted current awareness service that uses information about your professional interests to generate personalised current awareness bulletins straight to your email.
- Current Awareness bulletins created by the Library & Knowledge Service for NHS Ambulance Services in England
–Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response
–Further Research Needed
-Telephone Support in Prehospital Care
- Pinboards for latest prehospital and paramedicine research created by LKS ASE Librarian, Matt Holland. Includes topics such as
If you have problems accessing any of the content listed on this page please contact library.mailbox@nhs.net