Subscription databases (require SVHM login)
Open access databases
Clinical point of care tool. Includes evidence based summaries of medical issues and treatment. Access provided by SVHM IT Department.
Remote access is available via registration at the website. Watch how to register (video)
Clinicians Health Channel - provided by the Health Department, Victoria
Includes MIMs, Australian Medicines Handbook, and Therapeutic Guidelines as well as bibliographic databases and journal collections.
Please note that access to Australian Standards has changed.
Access via the new platform Techstreet is currently available via invitation.
More information is available via the SVHA intranet site (restricted to SVHA staff only)
The following diagram shows the type of content, and a rough idea of the overlap, of key databases. It demonstrates the need for multiple databases to be included in a comprehensive literature search, but it does not attempt to be exact or exhaustive. Databases change constantly and there are many layers of duplication.
Choosing which database to search
Keep in mind that the specialty area of a database is very broad, and it indicates the types of journals indexed rather than the specific content. For example a nursing and allied health database will still include articles on general medicine, psychology and radiology which are published in nursing and allied health journals. Likewise, there are many nursing related topics in Medline and PsycINFO. Medline and Embase cover an extremely wide range of topics.
For most health related systematic reviews we would include:
If you just need to dip in and find a handful of articles in one database (say for a presentation), then we suggest Ovid Medline.
Don't confuse the name of the database with the years of coverage
Database content constantly changes and records are added retrospectively so years of coverage are fluid.
It is important to understand that the years indicated in a database name – such as Ovid MEDLINE(R) ALL <1946 to present> often refer to the date the catalogue started (1946 in this case) and not to the date of the earliest publications indexed in the database, which in Medline go back to the late 1700s.
For many bibliographic databases it is not possible to accurately define the years of coverage. That is why we keep these records for systematic reviews:
Helen Wilding, Senior Research Librarian, St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne, 2020