Introduction
Evidence-based nursing effectively defines the professional field today. Nursing practice will be vastly crippled and of high risk in the absence of research data as nursing knowledge is dependent upon empirical evidence derived from painstaking accumulation of nursing literature in various facets of nursing practice (Houser, 2015). Inevitably, the first step in the evolving capacity of nursing students in the conduct of nursing research and the utilization of findings of those already available, involves a proficiency in the search for rich clinical research databases (CRDs) and the building of a dependable list of these databases for future research endeavors.
This paper identified five open access CRDs with rich resources of peer-reviewed literature that can support a serious investigation of animal assisted therapy on elderly patients with dementia, according to the PICOT (People, Intervention, Comparator, Outcome, and Time frame)-based clinical research question (RQ): “Social behavior and engagement outcomes from animal assisted therapy of at least a year among elderly patients with dementia in long-term care facilities”. More than half of these CRDs are recommended by the American Nurses Association ([ANA], 2017). The rest had to be searched individually through the Google search engine.
The Five Preferred Open Access Clinical Research Databases
#1 Database (the Virginia Henderson Global Nursing Repository)
Owner or Publisher of Database: Sigma Theta Tau International, which is located in Indianapolis, IN, and the organizer of the Honor Society of Nursing (VHGNE, 2017a)
Description of Database: The database contains a search result of 2,968 peer reviewed articles, obtained using the key phrases “animal assisted therapy” and “elderly”. It includes 975 pieces of full-text research articles on the subject and 660 pieces of abstracts with the latest entry dated March 2016 (VHGNE, 2017b). The majority (2,406 items) consists of presentations. The search results do not display the name of the source journals so that each article must be opened to obtain that information. Around half of these materials are downloadable in PDF formats.
#2 Database (the National Guideline Clearinghouse Online Database)
Owner or Publisher of Database: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), an agency under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) (NGC, 2017a)
Description of Database: NGC has a minimum of 600 relevant summaries of research reports on animal assisted therapy on dementia with a full year of posting delay (2016 summaries are not yet posted as of this writing) (NGC, 2017b). Summary publishers are displayed in the search results. It has also a side-by-side comparison capability to analyze multiple summaries.
#3 Database (the Online TRIP Database)
Owner or Publisher of Database: Trip Database Ltd, a company based in the UK
Description of Database: The TRIP database contains 280 relevant articles in animal assisted therapy among dementia patients, which displays in the search results the full name of journals from where these articles were published (TRIP, 2017b). Its latest articles are dated 2015. It also has a search capability for articles based on a PICO filtering system (TRIP, 2017a).
#4 Database (the Medscape Online Medical and Health News Magazine)
Owner or Publisher of Database: WebMD LLC, a leading online global health and medical info database, based in New York (Medscape, 2017a), and owner of WebMD.com.
Description of Database: The Medscape database contains 2,785 articles on animal assisted therapy among dementia patients with a brief summary displayed on its search results and the full name of the sourced journal (Medscape, 2017b). There is a year delay in the posting of new articles though with 2015 articles as the latest resources accessible. It has medical news and expert perspectives on various health and medical topics and issues (Medscape, 2017a).
#5 Database (the United States Clinical Trial Online Database)
Owner or Publisher of Database: The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Description of Database: This database contains a comprehensive list (259 studies) of recruiting, ongoing, and completed clinical trials on animal assisted therapy on various clinical conditions and patient populations (Clinical Trials, 2017b). It is essentially a registry and results collection of clinical studies (currently at 233,738 studies) involving human participants, which are conducted globally (currently in 195 countries and all 50 U.S. states) (Clinical Trials, 2017a).
Conclusion
The search for rich and comprehensive nursing CRDs turned out to be challenging as many large databases have limited nursing research resources, animal assisted therapy studies, and less accessible due to its close access systems. The five CRDs identified in this paper represent the most comprehensive sources for animal assisted therapy studies involving elderly dementia patients with a mixture of nursing and non-nursing journals and literature resources.
References
ANA. (2017). Databases and resources. Nursingworld.org. Retrieved from: http://www.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/ThePracticeofProfessionalNursing/Improving-Your-Practice/Research-Toolkit/Acquiring-Information/Databases-and-Resources.html.
Clinical Trials. (2017b). Search results. ClinicalTrials.gov. Retrieved from: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=animal+assisted+therapy&Search=Search.
Houser, J. (2015). Nursing research: Reading, using, and creating evidence (3rd ed.). Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett.
Medscape. (2017a). About. Medscape.com. Retrieved from: http://www.medscape.com/public/about.
Medscape. (2017b). “Animal assisted therapy, dementia”. Medscape.com. Retrieved from: http://search.medscape.com/search/?q=animal%20assisted%20therapy,%20dementia.
NGC. (2017a). Home. NGC.gov. Retrieved from: https://www.ngc.gov/.
NGC. (2017b). Results for “animal assisted therapy, dementia”. NGC.gov. Retrieved from: http://www.nursinglibrary.org/vhl/simple-search?query=animal+assisted+therapy+dementia+&field1=ANY&quicksearch=true&submit_search=Go&submit_search.x=0&submit_search.y=0.
TRIP. (2017a). PICO. Tripdatabase.com. Retrieved from: https://www.tripdatabase.com/#pico.
TRIP. (2017b). 280 results for “animal assisted therapy, dementia”, by quality. Tripdatabase.com. Retrieved from: https://www.tripdatabase.com/search?criteria=animal+assisted+therapy%2C+dementia&lang=en/.
VHGNE. (2017a). About the Henderson Repository. Nursinglibrary.org. Retrieved from: http://www.nursinglibrary.org/vhl/pages/about.html.
VHGNE. (2017b). Search results. Nursinglibrary.org. Retrieved from: http://www.nursinglibrary.org/vhl/simple-search?query=animal+assisted+therapy+dementia+&field1=ANY&quicksearch=true&submit_search=Go&submit_search.x=0&submit_search.y=0.
