Use Professional and Scholarly Sources to Help Choose a Topic
Nursing Association Websites
Many nursing associations advocate for change. That means publicizing federal and state hot issues! Check the website of your organization for an advocacy, government affairs, public policy, or federal or state issues page that is available to non-members. Examples:
- ANA Federal Issues: http://www.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/ANAPoliticalPower/Federal/Issues.aspx
- AORN Public Policy AORN: http://www.aorn.org/PublicPolicy
- AANA State Issues: http://www.aana.com/Advocacy.aspx?ucNavMenu_TSMenuTargetID=49&ucNavMenu_TSMenuTargetType=4&ucNavMenu_TSMenuID=6&id=131
Nursing Literature
CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature) 1937-present
Great place to start policy issue research! Find out which policies or legal cases or bills and laws are being discussed in healthcare journals. To log in, use your UNCG username and password (the same information you use to access Blackboard and iSpartan email).
Discussions of policy:
- Type your topic and the word policy: staffing AND policy
- Under refine search, set Publication Year: 2004-2009
- Too many results? Click on one of the Narrow Results links in the sidebar
- Try different terms for your topic, such as manpower or shortage
- To see an abstract (if the author provided one), mouse over the magnifying glass in the citation
Discussions of legal cases:
- Type your topic in a search box: staffing or manpower
- Set the search limit Publication type to Legal Cases to find reviews of legal cases on your topic
- If you don’t find enough results, word your topic differently, try searching a different topic, or try searching through Legal News or Legal Reviews in LexisNexis Academic
Discussions of bills and laws:
- Type your topic and the word legislation: manpower AND legislation
- If you don’t find enough results, word your topic differently or try searching a different topic
Under each citation:
- Open PDF Full Text link to read, print, email
- OR follow Check for full text link to open Journal Finder and see if the library has the journal
Law Reviews
LexisNexis Academic
Follow the Legal Research link along the top bar. This takes you to a search of Law Reviews (articles from scholarly law journals that give an overview of a law topic and cite particular cases)
- Type a topic: nursing and safety and (staffing or manpower)
- Specify date : past two years (change to past five years if you don't get enough results)
- Results are full text; you can sort by relevance then use print/email buttons in top right corner
Citing articles in APA Format:
APA uses an author-date approach to formatting references. In the text of your paper, you'd include author name and year as in this example: Recent legislation will have unforeseen effects on tort litigation (Smith, 2003). For other variations of in-text citations, see the Publication Manual of the APA (2010), pp. 174-179.
This is the Jackson Library interpretation of APA style for an article found in a subscription database such as LexisNexis Academic (except the 2nd line should be indented):
Swedloff, R . (2008). Can't Settle, Can't Sue: How Congress Stole Tort Remedies From Medicare Beneficiaries. The Akron Law Review, 41. Retrieved from http://www.uakron.edu/law/lawreview.
For other examples, see p. 199 of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2010).
