LibGuides: Acute & Complex Care: Clinical Reference Tools

Critical Care Clinical Reference Tools

Prompt is your first stop for Clinical Reference Documents at NHW. It is NHW's document management portal for policy, procedures and guidelines and also contains forms, templates, checklists and other documents. Many of the documents simply link to an external guideline that has been adopted for use at NHW. The Prompt database can be searched from the quick links on the NHW intranet homepage. Registration for offsite access is available if you have access to NHW email at home.

Quick links to most accessed Prompt documents:

Joanna Briggs Institute JBI
The Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) is NHW's preferred next stop for policy, procedure and guidelines. JBI is one of the world's leading evidence-based practice (EBP) organisations. JBI's evidence-based practice resources assist healthcare professionals to implement an effective evidence-based practice program to provide the best possible patient care.
- JBI Information and Introductory tutorial video
- NHW jumpstart page for searching JBI
If, after searching Prompt and JBI, you have still not found what you need, try the following databases:

Australian Clinical Practice Guidelines - NHMRC This link opens in a new window
The National Health and Medical Research Council's Guidelines Portal provides a single entry point for access to clinical practice guidelines developed for use in Australian health care settings
Australian Resuscitation Council Guidelines This link opens in a new window
The Australian Resuscitation Council produces Guidelines to meet its objectives in fostering uniformity and simplicity in resuscitation techniques and terminology.
Critical Care This link opens in a new window
A-Z of Clinical Guidelines for Critical Care provided by Safer Care Victoria
Cochrane Library This link opens in a new window
The Cochrane Library is a collection of databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making.

DHHS Workforce model to support patient prone positioning within intensive care unit (ICU)/critical care environments

eTG Complete (Therapeutic Guidelines) This link opens in a new window
Therapeutic Guidelines provide clear, concise, independent and evidence-based recommendations for patient management that have been developed by Australia's leading medical experts.
ACORN Standards for Perioperative Nursing in Australia This link opens in a new window
Every two years the ACORN Standards for Perioperative Nursing are researched and reviewed to support contemporary evidenced-based practice. The ACORN Standards are highly respected and are utilised by accreditation authorities with the standards having been cited within the Australian Law Courts in several medico legal cases. It is incumbent on all perioperative nurses to have an understanding of the standards.
Lung Foundation This link opens in a new window
Lung Foundation Australia offers a range of evidence-based guidelines, training and patient resources to support early diagnosis and best practice management of COPD and other pulmonary and respiratory conditions.
NSQHS This link opens in a new window
Key functions of the Commission include developing national safety and quality standards, developing clinical care standards to improve the implementation of evidence-based health care, coordinating work in specific areas to improve outcomes for patients, and providing information, publications and resources about safety and quality.

Point of Care Tools are clinical overviews for diagnosis & treatment designed for clinicians to quickly look up information when they are with a patient. They are summaries of evidence from peer reviewed sources and are updated regularly by specialty experts. Some also contain a variety of resources from primary source (eg. Medline) searches to eBooks and eJournals, guidelines, images and videos.

Drug Point of Care resources - Mims, AMH, etc., use the Drug Resources tab at the top of this page.

UpToDate This link opens in a new window
UpToDate is an evidence-based, physician-authored clinical decision support resource which clinicians trust to make the right point-of-care decisions. It includes a collection of medical and patient information, access to Lexi-comp drug monographs and drug-to-drug, drug-to-herb and herb-to-herb interactions information, and a number of medical calculators. NOTE: UpToDate Anywhere registration is available to NHW staff by registering from this link when onsite at NHW.

Ovid Clinical Edge This link opens in a new window
Ovid Clinical Edge is a clinical, evidence-based tool that combines content from UpToDate, (Must already be logged into UpToDate.) MEDLINE, and Ovid journals. Quickly access current journal research, evidence–based guidelines, and ebooks with full-text links.

BMJ Best Practice This link opens in a new window
BMJ Best Practice is a easy-to-use decision-support tool that provides authoritative answers to clinical questions. It contains information relating to over 10,000 diagnoses, more than 3,000 diagnostic tests and over 4,000 diagnostic and treatment guidelines. At its core, Best Practice contains the internationally renowned Clinical Evidence. Drug information is provided by Martindale: the Complete Drug Reference. Martindale can be accessed via the Drugs menu or by selecting a drug when viewing a condition or symptom.

ClinicalKey This link opens in a new window
ClinicalKey database offers access to medical and surgical books & journals, also medical videos and images.The database also includes drug monographs, clinical guidelines and patient education handouts.

Cochrane Library This link opens in a new window
The Cochrane Library is a collection of databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making.
Joanna Briggs Institute This link opens in a new window
Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) is one of the world's leading evidence-based practice (EBP) organisations.
JBI's evidence-based practice resources assist healthcare professionals to implement an effective evidence-based practice program to provide the best possible patient care.
Trip Database This link opens in a new window
Trip is a clinical search engine designed to allow users to quickly and easily find and use high-quality research evidence to support their practice and/or care.

Most Primary evidence databases also have filters for a variety of publication types - Reviews, RCTs, Guidelines and so forth.

CINAHL Plus with Full Text This link opens in a new window
The Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) database covers the literature of nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, nutrition and dietetics, and other health-related professions.
CINAHL indexes many allied health related journals not covered by MEDLINE and includes citations to books, book chapters, and dissertations. There much overlap of content coverage between MEDLINE and CINAHL, but both databases should be searched to achieve comprehensive retrieval of literature related to a clinical question
Medline (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
MEDLINE is the United States National Library of Medicine's premier bibliographic database providing information from the following fields: Medicine, Nursing, Dentistry, Veterinary medicine, Allied health, Pre-clinical sciences. The MEDLINE database is the electronic counterpart of Index Medicus, Index to Dental Literature, and the International Nursing Index. The Ovid MEDLINE database contains bibliographic citations and author abstracts from more than 5,500 biomedical journals published in the United States and in 70 other countries. The database contains over 13 million citations dating back to 1950, and is updated daily.
EmBase This link opens in a new window
The Excerpta Medica database (EMBASE), produced by Elsevier, is a major biomedical and pharmaceutical database indexing over 3,500 international journals in the following fields: drug research, pharmacology, pharmaceutics, toxicology, clinical and experimental human medicine, health policy and management, public health, occupational health, environmental health, drug dependence and abuse, psychiatry, forensic medicine, and biomedical engineering/instrumentation. There is selective coverage for nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, psychology, and alternative medicine. Coverage is from 1947 up to the present, and is updated weekly.
Informit Health Collection This link opens in a new window
Predominantly Nursing and Allied Health Australasian health information, Informit Health Collection covers more than 190 source titles, including peer-reviewed journals, trade publications, conference papers and e-books. Coverage is 100% full text and includes evidence-based healthcare extending to all nursing specialties and professions.
Content includes research articles, reports and case studies of practical support to anyone studying or working in therapeutic, diagnostic and preventative health roles.

Much content included in the Collection is unavailable online elsewhere and includes journals dedicated to specialist and current topics of interest including ageing and aged care, child health and breastfeeding, indigenous health issues, mental health and rehabilitation.