Nursing

Clinical practice guidelines, or simply guidelines, provide evidence-based recommendations to guide healthcare practitioners in their patient care decision-making. They are often published as articles in peer-reviewed journals. 

To locate guideline articles published in professional, health sciences journals, the best place to start is a research database. 

See below for step-by-step instructions for locating guidelines in CINAHL, PubMed, and ClinicalKey. 

To narrow your CINAHL search results to guideline articles, follow these steps: 

• Access CINAHL by clicking here 
• Click on Advanced Search and enter your search terms
• Before hitting the Search button, scroll down underneath Filters and navigate to the Publication Type menu to select Practice Guidelines, then hit Search

To narrow your PubMed search results to guideline articles, follow these steps:

• Access PubMed via the PubMed@UT link to see all filters/limiting options
• Conduct your search using relevant keywords, i.e.: 
• After retrieving a list of results, click the Guideline filter on the left side of the search results screen:

ClinicalKey is a multi-format database that includes clinical information from a variety of sources, including books and journals. 

To locate practice guidelines in ClinicalKey follow the steps in the two options below: 

Option 1: Next to the search box in the middle of the page, choose Guidelines from the drop-down menu. Type your search terms in the box, and click Search

Option 2: Browse all guidelines by clicking the Guidelines box on the main ClinicalKey page 

The following are good starting points for finding practice guidelines in a variety of areas. 

Below are selected links to resources for finding specific guidelines from a sampling of organizations/societies.

Access a comprehensive list of healthcare organizations via MedlinePlus.