Research Guides: Physical Therapy: Introduction

Starting Points

This guide is for students in the Physical Therapy program. Use the resources and information on this guide to help with course research. The Ginsburg Health Sciences Library and main campus Charles Library both have holdings in the areas of physical therapy, health, population health, health promotion, psychology, and other therapies. For help with research, please email your librarian or schedule an appointment.

Top Resources

AccessPhysiotherapy This link opens in a new window
Access Physiotherapy from McGraw-Hill features learning tools such as video demonstrations, image slides, online dissection, and quizzes. The complete contents of physical therapy textbooks and resources such as Orthopaedic Examination, Evaluation, and Intervention; Pharmacology for the Physical Therapist; Therapeutic Modalities for Rehabilitation; Imaging in Rehabilitation; and others, are included.
PubMed This link opens in a new window
PubMed comprises more than 37 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites. MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online) is the largest component of PubMed and consists primarily of journal citations; articles indexed with MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) and curated with funding, genetic, chemical and other metadata.
CINAHL This link opens in a new window
CINAHL Provides indexing for nursing and health journals. The database contains records dating back to 1982. In addition, the database offers access to health care books, and selected conference proceedings.
CINAHL Abstracting and Indexing Database
Nurses, allied health professionals, researchers, nurse educators and students depend on the CINAHL Database to research their subject areas from this authoritative index of nursing and allied health journals. CINAHL indexes the top nursing and allied health literature available including nursing journals and publications from the National League for Nursing and the American Nurses Association. CINAHL also includes rigorous curation and indexing of open access (OA) journals, which has resulted in a growing collection of 1,446 active global OA journals.  Once validated and certified for inclusion, these OA journals are treated with high-quality subject indexing and sophisticated, precise/accurate full-text linking.
Subject Headings
CINAHL Subject Headings help users effectively search and retrieve information and follow the structure of the Medical Subject headings (MeSH) used by the National Library of Medicine. These Subject Headings help researchers find new concepts, including COVID-19, social distancing and vaping as well as local terminology.
Content Includes
3,814 active indexed and abstracted journals
3,461 active peer-reviewed indexed and abstracted journals
1,312 journals with searchable cited references
SPORTDiscus with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Concurrent user limit: 8
SPORT Discus is a full text international sports database which covers the fields of exercise, medicine, biomechanics, coaching and sports medicine.

PEDro
PEDro is the Physiotherapy Evidence Database. PEDro is a free database of over 33,000 randomised trials, systematic reviews and clinical practice guidelines in physiotherapy. For each trial, review or guideline, PEDro provides the citation details, the abstract and a link to the full text, where possible. All trials on PEDro are independently assessed for quality using the PEDro scale.

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