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Residents Library Guide

A guide to help UNMC, Nebraska Medicine, and Children's Nebraska residents and fellows access and use the McGoogan Library for their research and study needs.

Welcome

This page is for nurses at Nebraska Medicine who are involved in the nursing residency program or who may be working on evidence-based practice resources . To access these resources, you must have a Nebraska Medicine net id or email address (name@nebraskamed.com). If you have volunteer faculty status, review our Faculty and Staff services page on how to get library access.

Find the literature databases

Looking for articles to support your EBP project or policy review for nursing residency?  Click on the link above to be taken to the Nebraska Medicine Virtual Library's databases. 

Library Services

Library services are available for Nebraska Medicine staff.
  • Literature Search Service
    Librarians are available to search the literature for you. Searches are usually completed within 2 business days. You can also make the request by contacting the AskUs Desk via phone or email.
  • Interlibrary Loan
    Request articles and books through Interlibrary Loan. This service allows access to articles that are not available through Nebraska Medicine's or UNMC collections, as well as providing a document delivery service for articles in library-owned print journals. New users that are not affiliated with UNMC will need to create an account.
  • UNMC Health Information Service
    The UNMC Health Information Service assists Nebraska residents or patients receiving health care in Nebraska, and their families, in finding information on health and wellness topics.
  • Systematic Review Service
    Librarians are available to collaborate on literature searches for a systematic review. Visit this research guide for more information and to schedule an appointment to discuss your project.
  • DigitalCommons@UNMC
    An online repository of the research, scholarly communications, and educational output produced or owned by the UNMC community and clinical partners.
  • 3D Printing
    3D printing can support medical device prototyping, visual aids for patient education, laboratory science, materials for science education and more.

Where to find Guidelines & Protocols

Searching for guidelines in the literature?  Use these search strategies to add to your concepts and narrow your results to guidelines:

PubMed search strategy for guidelines: (clinical[tiab] AND pathway[tiab]) OR (clinical[tiab] AND pathways[tiab]) OR (practice[tiab] AND parameter[tiab]) OR (practice[tiab] AND parameters[tiab]) OR algorithms[mesh:noexp] OR care pathway[tiab] OR care pathways[tiab] OR clinical protocols[mesh:noexp] OR Consensus[mesh:noexp] or consensus development conference[pt:noexp] OR "Consensus Development Conference, NIH"[pt:noexp] OR "Consensus Development Conferences as Topic"[Mesh:noexp] OR "Consensus Development Conferences, NIH as Topic"[Mesh:NoExp] OR critical pathway[mesh:noexp] OR guidance[tiab] OR guideline*[ti] OR guidelines as topic[mesh:noexp] or practice guidelines as topic[mesh:noexp] or Health Planning Guidelines[mesh:noexp] OR practice guideline[mesh:noexp]

Google Scholar search strategy: intitle:guideline OR intitle:guidelines OR intitle:"position statement" OR intitle:"best practice" OR intitle:consensus OR intitle:algorithm OR intitle:"standard orders" OR intitle:protocol OR intitle:recommendations

Search specific associations like the American Heart Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, etc. to view their guidelines.

EBP, QI, or Policy Review Projects

The McGoogan Library is here to support you in your nursing residency project, whether that be an Evidence-based Practice project, quality improvement, or current protocol/practice review.  You are welcome to utilize the literature search service to request the librarians run your literature search. Click HERE to request a literature search.

When requesting a literature search:

  1. Please spell out all acronyms and explain any nursing-specific jargon.  We librarians are familiar with lots of medical terminology but not all, and there are many acronyms that are used in multiple contexts.
  2. Please submit your literature search requests in the form of a well-thought-out research question.  Include items such as: patient population, problem being investigated, setting, detailed description of any intervention being utilized, specific outcomes you are interested in, a detailed description of any unit-specific program or protocol being investigated (i.e. "stoplight program" or "sleep bundle")
  3. Please submit one research question/literature search request at a time.  Multiple topic requests in one submission results in a longer turnaround time.
  4. You will typically receive a response from the library within 2-3 business days.  The library's response may be delayed when search request numbers are high or when a librarian needs to ask you clarifying questions before beginning his/her/their search efforts.
  5. When completing the search request form, please, select the "nursing residency/nursing fellowship project" option rather than any of the other available options (i.e. rather than "urgent patient care" "patient care," etc. options).  This will allow the library to submit helpful statistics concerning library usage  to the Nebraska Medicine leadership and to the nursing residency program.
  • Articles will be sent to you in 2 formats:
    • An RIS file is attached ready for import into a citation manager (EndNote or Zotero, etc.).
    • A Word document with a bibliography of the results.  Links are included that will facilitate your access to full-text articles.  To obtain full text of a listed article, start by clicking the "Search Google Scholar for the article title" link for that article. If the article isn't freely available, return to the Word document and click the "Interlibrary Loan" link for the article of interest.  If you haven't already created an interlibrary loan request, click the "Create an Account for non-unmc.edu users" link.  After you create your account, a pre-populated request form will appear.  Simply click the "Submit Request" button.  

You may also request a research consultation with a librarian to discuss your project in-depth.  Research consultations help you refine your topic and help the librarian to understand your topic completely and allows us to ask any clarifying questions. Click HERE to make a research consultation appointment. 

Leveling the evidence

Level ​

Descriptor​

Level I​

Systematic review of RCTs, with or without meta-analysis​

Level II​

 Quasi-experimental Study​
Systematic review of a combination of RCTs and quasi-experimental, or quasi-experimental studies only, with or without meta-analysis.​

Level III​

Systematic review of RCTs, with or without meta-analysis​
Quasi-experimental Study​
Systematic review of a combination of RCTs and quasi-experimental, or quasi-experimental studies only, with or without meta-analysis.​

Level IV​

Opinion of respected authorities and/or nationally recognized expert committees/consensus panels based on scientific evidence.​
    Includes:  Clinical practice guidelines,  consensus panels​

Level V​

Based on experiential and non-research evidence.​
  Includes:  Literature reviews, Quality improvement, program or financial evaluation, Case reports, Opinion of nationally recognized expert(s) based on experiential evidence​

Iowa Model for appraising the literature

 Nebraska Medicine currently uses the Iowa Model to critically appraise literature for the inclusion in evidence-based practice.

Iowa Model Collaborative. (2017). Iowa model of evidence-based practice: Revisions and validation. Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing, 14(3), 175-182. doi:10.1111/wvn.12223

Used/reprinted with permission from the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, copyright 2015. For permission to use or reproduce, please contact the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics at 319-384-9098.