HSCI 319: Applied Health Ethics

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Purpose and scope

I have created this guide to help you as you work through your assignments for HSCI 319.

If you need help, please contact Hazel Plante, Liaison Librarian at 778.782.4173 or hazel_plante@sfu.ca or Ask a librarian.

Finding books

You can find books in the Library Catalogue. A search for medical tourism brought up 63 results, including 2 books from 2011. Medical tourism india returned a list of 13 books, and reproductive tourism brought up 16 books. All of these results were a mix of print and online books.

Clicking on subjects is a good way to see related books in the library. You can also find the book on the bookshelf, and browse around the area to see other books on the same topic.

Full-text news databases at SFU Library

SFU Library's list of news databases contain several sources that should prove useful for your assignments:

Canadian Newsstream
Full text of nearly 300 newspapers from Canada's leading publishers, including the Globe & Mail and the National Post, as well as local papers such as the Vancouver Sun, the Province, Vancouver Courier, and the Burnaby Now. Stories are presented as HTML so images and the layout context are not preserved. 

CBCA Complete
Current events as covered in Canadian newspapers, newswires, newsmagazines, as well as television and radio transcripts. Includes some full text, in html and pdf files.

PressReader
Current issues (1-3 months) of newspapers from around the world.  Provide replica of print source so the context  (layout, illustrations) for stories is available.

Nexis Uni
International news coverage, strongly American with good coverage of Canadian sources & topics

Alternative Press Index
Indexes roughly 380 alternative, radical, and left publications.

Vancouver Public Library British Columbia Index
A "finding tool for documents and facts related to the history of Canada's Pacific Province", including indexing for local alternative press such as the Georgia Straight, the WestEnder, the Courier and  Xtra! West.  Provides a citation but no full text.

Databases for journal articles

Think broadly; It's helpful to consider what fields are spanned by your topic, and therefore what databases may contain useful information for your assignments. In addition to the health databases, you may also want to consider searching philosophy, public policy databases and sociology databases for other perspectives on your topic.

For newer areas of research, there can be variations in terminology. If you are not finding what you need with your first search term, consider trying related search terms to pick up variations in author terminology.  For example, medical tourism OR medical travel OR health tourism.

Health databases

Philosophy databases

Other databases

How to find a known article

Try searching for the journal title in the Library Catalogue. For example, to find this article:

Kerr, Z. Y., Collins, C. L., & Comstock, R. D. (2011). Epidemiology of bowling-related injuries presenting to US emergency departments, 1990-2008. Clinical Pediatrics, 50(8), 738-746.

...you would search for Clinical Pediatrics in the Catalogue. You'd see an entry that looks like the picture below, and you would click the title (Clinical Pediatrics.)

Then, on the following page, you'd click on the link that says "Online access".

Finding grey literature

Grey literature will contain research on your topic that's been done by governments, university research centers and think tanks, that may not be commercially published and/or indexed in databases like Medline.

How to search for grey literature

Canadian Electronic Library from desLibris contains the full text of public policy documents from many Canadian institutes, think-tanks and research groups.

Google's site limits can be very helpful to find grey literature. Add the domain of the government or institution whose sites you want to search to your Google search. For more advanced searching techniques, check out "Get More Out of Google."

Google Scholar can be another useful source for finding grey literature. Be sure to access Google Scholar via the Library's website to ensure you see the "Where can I get this?" links that will take you to full text SFU offers. Just go to "Article Databases", then use the Google Scholar box you find there.

Writing & citing

For help with writing your assignments, check out the Student Learning Commons; they offer workshops, one-on-one consultations, and a variety of handouts on writing and study tips.

The Library has citation guides for APA and MLA styles, as well as other advice on preparing your papers.