Subject Guides: Health Humanities: Primary and Secondary Sources: Secondary Sources

Secondary Biomedical Sources

Secondary sources list, summarize, compare, and evaluate primary information and studies so as to draw conclusions on or present the current state of knowledge in a discipline or subject. Sources may include a bibliography that directs you back to the primary research discussed in the work.

Secondary Sources include:

reviews, systematic reviews, meta-analysis
newsletters and professional news sources
practice guidelines & standards
clinical care notes
patient education information
government & legal information
monographs
entries in medical or nursing encyclopedias

Databases

PubMed
PubMed is the premier biomedical database from the National Library of Medicine and contains over 25 million citations
Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
Full text of the Cochrane Collaboration's regularly updated systematic reviews of the effects of health care interventions.
Web of Science
Identifies journal articles and cited references to research publications from all disciplines, some with links to full text. Comprised of three databases that can be searched separately or in combination: Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1975-current), Science Citation Index Expanded (1973-current), Social Sciences Citation Index (1973-current).
Embase
A database of citations with Medline coverage as well as conference proceedings and over 8500 journals not indexed in PubMed
MedlinePlus
Produced at the National Library of Medicine, MedlinePlus links to information from both government and non-government sites. Includes health topics, drugs & supplements, medical encyclopedia, medical dictionary, videos, tutorials, multiple languages, some easy to read information for low literacy, and low vision resources.