Post Graduate Health & Nursing: Databases

Proprietary databases 

If you use a journal article from one of our research databases, you don't need to say which database it came from, you just reference it as you would a print journal, this is because the article is likely to be found in multiple places. 

However, there are a few specialised nursing databases (mainly the point-of-care ones) in which the information can only be found within that database.  We call these proprietary databases, and we need to reference them a little differently.

 The main things to note are:

• For many of these databases, the name of the database is included in italic title case.
• If your reader is from the University of Waikato (e.g. your marker) then you can put the direct link to the document, but if the readers may not have access, then you just put the URL to the homepage of the database. 
• Some of them have retrieval dates, this is because the information is often being updated and changed in those databases.

The main ones you'll be using are listed below with some examples for you to follow (remember to use the guide to help you format your entries depending on the number of authors).

(For additional information see the APA Style Guide)