Assignment, what is a (nursing journal?)

Nursing Students General Students

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Specializes in home health, LTC, assisted living.

:uhoh21: help! can someone tell me what the difference is between an article in a nursing journal and a nursing magazine? we have an assignment, to be taken from a nursing journal. what are the names of some of them, and where do I look? thank u so much :idea:

Specializes in ER.

If you type in "nursing journals" in Google, you should find lists of them on various websites. I just did this, and found plenty of info. Does your school have a library, or an online database you can use? That makes things a little easier. If not, maybe ask your local librarian to help you find some. When in school, librarians are LIFE SAVERS! They sure save me a lot of stress when I have no clue how to find what I need.

As far as telling the difference between a nursing professional journal and a magazine, when in doubt, we were taught to look for things like credentials of the author being detailed with the article, abstracts of the article, plenty of scientific or research references, etc, to help identify a journal article (when in doubt, I just don't use the article, though :chuckle not worth the risk!). You can also look up information on the publication.

Happy hunting!

I'm not exactly 100% sure on this, but I believe that any magazine that focuses on a specific subject such as nursing would be considered a journal. I see a magazine as something like Cosmopolitan and a journal as something that contains information specific to a certain subject. But the above poster is right in the fact that the name of the person writing the article needs to be on the article along with there credentials. Also at the end of the article there should be the references that the author used. This is stuff you wouldn't find in a magazine such as Cosmo.

A journal will have peer-reviewed articles, meaning that nurses are examining the articles for scientific merit. Look in the portion of the journal, towards the front, where they state subscription and other information. Somewhere on that page they will mention "peer-reviewed". Magazines do not generally carry scientific articles. They are more commercial (but interesting).

One that I subscribed to that is quite helpful is "Nursing Made Incredibly Easy". It comes every othr month and helps me see things as a nurse. My wife gets a few other that are more technical like Nursing Spectrum and Nurses Advocate and the American Journal of Nursing to name a few I can think of.

Hope this helps.

:uhoh21: whare are you going to school? i have the same thing to do.
Specializes in home health, LTC, assisted living.
:uhoh21: whare are you going to school? i have the same thing to do.

Kathy: I live in good old MN :D and isn't that a coincidence --- same assignment

Specializes in ER.

Make sure you are careful about using things like Nursing Stectrum, Nursing World, etc. Those are generally considered "magazines", not professional journals, and we get zeros on our assignments if we use things like that. Not every school may be THAT particular, though. :rolleyes:

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