Information about, and searching HDAS

Opening Healthcare Databases Advanced Search (HDAS) interface:

1. To open the initial page, click here (unless you’re already logged into OpenAthens, only the Pubmed database will be available)
2. Click on the “Log into OpenAthens” tab on the top right of the page
3. Enter your OpenAthens log in (no account? Just click here to set one up in a couple of minutes)
4. All 9 databases should now be visible

Each is a collection of articles focusing on a specific theme:

AMED – Covers a selection of journals in complementary medicine and professions allied to medicine. Covers the years 1985 to present and updated monthly.

BNI – A comprehensive index covering all aspects of nursing, midwifery and community healthcare from 1985 to the present, updated monthly.

CINAHL – All aspects of nursing and allied health disciplines including midwifery, optometry, physical therapy and dietetics.

EMBASE – Over 3,500 international journals covering pharmacology, toxicology, clinical medicine, health policy and public health.

EMCARE – Nursing, medical and nursing education, emergency services, family practice, geriatrics and palliative care, behavioural science and psychology, nutrition and dietetics, physiotherapy and rehabilitation, public and occupational health, and social medicine.

HMIC – Covers health service policy, management and administration, with an emphasis on the British National Health Service; the quality of health services including hospitals, nursing, primary care and public health.

MEDLINE – Millions of citations derived from thousands of journals. Broadly, the subject areas covered are: allied health specialties, dentistry, nursing, medicine.

PsychINFO – Psychology categories including psychiatry, education, business, medicine, nursing, pharmacology, law, linguistics, and social work.

PubMed – Over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.

Using the interface:

HDAS can be a little complicated to search until you know how it works – it’s not like using google as it’s a different sort of engine – but there’s help available to get you on your way:

You may find these guides useful:

1. Seven short (20 minutes) e-learning modules to help understand Evidence Searching and how to use HDAS – link to them here
2. Brief written instructions, click here
3. Full user guide (38 pages!) – click here
4. Prefer to watch someone using the database & describing what they’re doing so you can copy? Click here

Prefer a real person?

If you’d like to arrange a training session on any of these resources please contact sarah.gardner11@nhs.net at Bassetlaw or dave.ashbey@nhs.net at DRI (although we can both travel to any site).

Allow up to 2 hours, and you can come to us, or we can come to you – whichever site you’re based at.

Back to Resources page – click here

---