Finding Nursing Journals

All nursing courses use APA documentation. See the "Citing and Evaluating Sources" link below for more information and resources on proper APA documentation. The APA Style Guide contains sample citations and templates for many source types as well as an extended discussion of in-text citations. The Allied Health APA Guide offers even more example citations and templates for health-specific resources, such as nursing care plans and research trials.

Librarians will review your citations for you! Simply bring a finalized copy of your references to the reference desk or e-mail it as a Word attachment to ref_desk@carrollcc.edu (we aim for a 24-hour max turnaround). We will only review final drafts. Citations that have little or no formatting (e.g. italics, quotation marks), are obviously copied and pasted from databases, are substantially lacking in bibliographic information, or contain major formatting issues will be returned without comment. Please see our citation policy for more information.

Citing and Evaluating Sources

You should use CCC's Microsoft Word APA template for nursing students when writing your research assignments. The template features placeholder headings on the title page and pre-formatted spacing and pagination. Simply follow the directions for inserting your paper's information and do not change the document's formatting. Consider using NoodleBib to copy and paste your References page when you are finished.

You MUST cite all of the sources you use within the text, regardless of whether you used the author's exact words or simply paraphrased. If you are paraphrasing the authors words, you need to include either a signal phrase or parenthetical citation, but quotes or page numbers are not necessary. Examples of signal phrases, parenthetical citations, and direct quotes are included below:

Signal phrase: Mong (2020) discusses many of the challenges of being an unpaid home caregiver, such as lack of legal and workplace protections, little or no division of labor, and societal devaluation of their roles.

Parenthetical citation: There are many challenges in being an unpaid home caregiver, such as lack of legal and workplace protections, little or no division of labor, and societal devaluation of their roles (Mong, 2020).

Direct quote, signal phrase: According to Mong (2020), "work performed at home has been so devalued that even paid home care workers- those who perform body care and tending- have been repeatedly left out of labor law protections" (73).

Direct quote, parenthetical citation: "Work performed at home has been so devalued that even paid home care workers- those who perform body care and tending- have been repeatedly left out of labor law protections (Mong, 2020, p. 73)

If a source has no author, then your in-text citation should be an abbreviated version of the title, not an editor. If the title of the work is italicized in your reference list, then italicize the title in your in-text citation; otherwise, include quotation marks around it. For example, the title Nursing care of children and young people with long-term conditions has 2 editors, but no author. A parenthetical citation might look like this:

Parenthetical citation, no author: (Nursing care, 2021).

Direct quotations from sources without an author should also include quotation marks and a page number, as described above.