A nursing assignment is marked on two questions. Does each claim rest on evidence a nurse could defend, and is each source cited so a marker can find it? A style answers the second, usually APA 7. An evidence hierarchy answers the first.
This guide, published by EdCitation, covers both: APA 7 citations for the sources nursing uses, its databases, and how nursing ranks evidence. Every rule was read at its source on 23 September 2026. Nothing here is clinical advice. EdCitation's free tools take on the second question: Cite a source builds each entry from the publisher's record, and Verify references confirms a finished list is real. The first question, how strong the evidence is, stays with you and your module's hierarchy.
Why do nursing students use APA 7?
Because their schools set it, and APA keeps a page of examples written for them. Victoria University's library guide says APA 7th edition is "required for units in the Bachelor of Nursing" (Victoria University Library, n.d.), and Aberystwyth University (n.d.) sets it for Healthcare Education. The University of Queensland Library (2026) points nursing students to APA 7th examples but tells them to check the course profile for their style. The course's own instruction always wins.
APA's Nursing Student References page (American Psychological Association, 2026), updated in September 2026, has two rules that apply everywhere. A group author may be abbreviated in the text but is spelled out in the reference. And a PubMed identifier (PMID) never appears in an APA reference. The in-text rules are in APA 7 in-text citations, and the style at a glance on the APA 7 page.
Where do nursing students search for sources?
In CINAHL for nursing and allied health, PubMed for biomedicine, and the Cochrane Library for systematic reviews.
CINAHL
EBSCO (n.d.) describes the CINAHL Database as an index of nursing and allied health literature, including publications from the National League for Nursing and the American Nurses Association: 3,741 active journals, 3,467 of them peer reviewed. Full text is in a companion, CINAHL Ultimate. Its subject headings follow the structure of MeSH, the National Library of Medicine's vocabulary.
PubMed and MEDLINE
PubMed is free and holds more than 40 million citations and abstracts, though not the full text, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (2025). Its largest part is MEDLINE: more than 31 million references from more than 5,200 journals, mainly from 1966 onwards, each indexed with MeSH (National Library of Medicine, n.d.). Keep the PMID to find the article again, or to paste into Cite a source, which takes one; leave it out of the reference.
The Cochrane Library, and JBI
Cochrane (n.d.) lists three databases in its Library: the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews; CENTRAL, a register of reports of randomised and quasi-randomised trials; and Cochrane Clinical Answers. The Library's own site and JBI's page on its EBP Database could not be read today, so neither is described further. The search itself is in finding sources for a literature review fast.
EdCitation's Find sources
Outside the library's subscriptions, EdCitation's free Find sources covers about 300 million published works; begin with a topic, or with the claim one sentence of your essay must support. Its filters narrow the kind of source and the years, useful when a brief sets an age limit, and its open-access filter finds papers you can read in full when CINAHL shows only the abstract.
Which sources count as evidence in nursing?
Research that answers the clinical question with the least risk of bias, ranked on a published hierarchy. In the UK the duty is professional as well as academic: section 6 of the NMC Code asks nurses to practise "in line with the best available evidence" (Nursing and Midwifery Council, 2018).
The JBI levels
The JBI Levels of Evidence and Grades of Recommendation Working Party (2013) wrote five scales, for effectiveness, diagnosis, prognosis, economic evaluations and meaningfulness. For effectiveness, Level 1 is experimental designs, from a systematic review of randomised trials (1.a) to pseudo-randomised trials (1.d), with a single trial at 1.c. Level 2 is quasi-experimental designs, Level 3 analytic observational designs such as cohort studies, Level 4 descriptive studies, and Level 5 expert opinion and bench research. JBI adds that levels do not replace critical appraisal and clinical reasoning.
Where the hierarchies disagree
Ferris State University Library (n.d.) sets out seven levels adapted from Melnyk and Fineout-Overholt's 2023 textbook. They part from JBI in three places:
- A single well-designed randomised trial is Level 2 there, but inside Level 1 for JBI.
- A systematic review of qualitative studies is Level 5 there, and Level 1 on JBI's scale for meaningfulness.
- Narrative and literature reviews sit at Level 7, the lowest, beside expert opinion.
The same page shows the Tufts evidence pyramid, which puts clinical guidelines at the top. Use the hierarchy your module names. If it names none, say which you used and apply it throughout.
How do I cite a guideline, a Cochrane review or a drug entry in APA 7?
Each has its own form on APA's nursing page.
A clinical practice guideline
Treat it as a report. When only an agency is credited, the agency is the author; when a committee and an agency are, the committee is the author and the agency the source. The title is in italic sentence case, the site name is dropped when it matches the author, and the date is the year of development, or of the update if there has been one (American Psychological Association, 2026).
That last rule is where the examples disagree. NICE guideline NG136 was published on 28 August 2019 and last updated on 26 February 2026 (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2026). APA's own example still dates it 2019; Aberystwyth uses 2026, as APA's rule requires. Use the update year, and ignore any "last reviewed" date:
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. (2026). Hypertension in adults: Diagnosis and management (NICE Guideline NG136). https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng136
In the text, write (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence [NICE], 2026) the first time, then (NICE, 2026).
A Cochrane review
Format it like a journal article, with the database name in italics in place of the journal. APA's example:
Laver, K. E., Lange, B., George, S., Deutsch, J. E., Saposnik, G., Chapman, M., & Crotty, M. (2025). Virtual reality for stroke rehabilitation. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD008349.pub5
A review's full text shows no volume, issue or article number, but its PDF does, and PubMed's record of Laver et al. (2025) shows all three. APA says to cite what you see. Versions of a review differ, so copy the DOI from the one you read.
A drug entry
APA treats drug information like a webpage: the drug or its maker as author, the drug's name in italics followed by "[Drug information]", the site and the URL. Brand names take a capital; generic names do not. An entry in a drug guide is cited like a chapter in an edited book:
Vallerand, A. H., & Sanoski, C. A. (2025). Hydroxychloroquine. In Davis’s drug guide (19th ed.). F. A. Davis Company. https://www.drugguide.com/ddo/view/Davis-Drug-Guide/51386/all/hydroxychloroquine
APA gives no example for the British National Formulary, and no form for it could be confirmed at source. Ask the module lead.
How do I cite a code, a statistic or a placement observation?
A code and a statistic are cited like reports. What you saw on placement is usually not cited at all.
The NMC Code or the ANA Code of Ethics
APA formats an ethics code as a report and cites a part in the text by the code's own word for it. The NMC Code was published in 2015 and updated on 10 October 2018 to cover nursing associates, so 2018 is the year:
Nursing and Midwifery Council. (2018). The Code: Professional standards of practice and behaviour for nurses, midwives and nursing associates. https://www.nmc.org.uk/globalassets/sitedocuments/nmc-publications/nmc-code.pdf
Aberystwyth cites a numbered part as a section: (NMC, 2018, Section 7.3). The Code writes the council's name with "and", Aberystwyth with an ampersand; keep to one. In the United States, APA cites the American Nurses Association's code by provision, as in (American Nurses Association, 2025, Provision 1.4):
American Nurses Association. (2025). Code of ethics for nurses. https://codeofethics.ana.org/provisions
A health statistic
Cite the page that published the number, and give the year the figure describes. APA adds "[Fact sheet]" after a fact sheet's title. The World Health Organization (2026) fact sheet of 11 August 2026 estimates 29.8 million nurses worldwide in 2023, up from 27.9 million in 2018:
World Health Organization. (2026, August 11). Nursing and midwifery [Fact sheet]. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/nursing-and-midwifery
A patient or a placement observation
What a reader cannot retrieve stays out of the reference list. APA allows it only as a personal communication in the text, giving initials, surname and an exact date, such as (T. Nguyen, personal communication, February 24, 2020), and only when no recoverable source exists. Its page counts intranet sources among them, which covers a hospital's internal policy (American Psychological Association, 2022).
A patient is different. That form asks for a name, and the NMC Code gives everyone receiving care a right to confidentiality that continues after they have died (Nursing and Midwifery Council, 2018). So a patient is never named or cited. Describe the case without identifying details, and cite published evidence for each clinical claim.
What does each nursing source look like in APA 7?
Most take the form of an article or a report:
| Source | Where nursing students find it | APA 7 author element | In the text |
|---|---|---|---|
| Journal article | CINAHL, PubMed | The authors | (Kataoka et al., 2022) |
| Cochrane review | Cochrane Library, PubMed | The review's authors | (Laver et al., 2025) |
| Clinical guideline | NICE, WHO, other agencies | The agency, or a credited committee | (NICE, 2026) |
| Drug guide entry | A drug guide, or DailyMed | The authors; for a label, the drug or its maker | (Vallerand & Sanoski, 2025) |
| Professional code | NMC or ANA website | The regulator or association | (NMC, 2018, Section 5.3) |
| Health statistic | WHO, CDC or ONS | The specific agency | (World Health Organization, 2026) |
| Patient or placement | The ward | None: it is not in the list | Not cited |
Every DOI is written as a link beginning https://doi.org/ (what a DOI is), and no PMID appears.
How do I check my evidence and references before submitting?
Evidence first, format last. Kataoka et al. (2022) used the Retraction Watch Database to find 587 articles, 525 systematic reviews and 62 clinical practice guidelines, citing retracted randomised controlled trials. Of the 127 that cited an already retracted trial without any caution, none corrected itself after publication.
- Read the brief and rubric for the style, the hierarchy and any rule on the number or age of sources (how to read an assignment brief). EdCitation's free Check your paper sets out the brief's style, word limit, sections and number of sources as a checklist.
- List each claim with its source, and that source's level beside it.
- Where a stronger source answers the same question, use it: a systematic review over a single study.
- Date each guideline by its latest update, and cite the version of each Cochrane review you read.
- Screen every source for retraction (retracted papers in your reference list). Cite a source does it as each entry is built.
- Remove anything that identifies a patient, a colleague or a placement.
- Hold the text and the list against each other: every citation in the assignment has one entry, and no entry is left uncited. Upload the whole assignment to Verify references and it matches them both ways.
- Look every reference up in the publisher's record, then format it (common APA 7 formatting mistakes). Verify references does the looking up, and Mechanics QA (Pro) checks the formatting against the APA 7 student paper.
Which tool is best for a nursing student's references?
EdCitation's Cite a source is the best tool for a nursing student's references, because it looks each source up in the publisher's record instead of writing the entry, which no chatbot can do, and screens it for retraction before it is cited. That matters in nursing's own evidence: Kataoka et al. (2022) found 62 clinical practice guidelines among the articles citing retracted trials. It builds the entry from a DOI, a PubMed ID, an ISBN or a title, so an article found in PubMed goes straight in by its PMID. The entry comes out in APA 7, or in Vancouver, Harvard, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date or IEEE. An article number is printed as APA wants it, "Article 14045". A title deposited in title case comes out in APA's sentence case, with names and initialisms kept; glance at any name made of ordinary words. It is free, with no account.
Verify references, free with no account, checks a finished list. Each reference in a nursing list lands in one of three places, verified, doubtful ("check this") or not found; retracted papers, trials included, are flagged; and when an index does not answer, the reference reads "could not check" and is never passed off as not found. Upload the full assignment and each in-text citation is traced to its entry, and each entry back to a sentence that cites it.
Pro costs $8 a month and adds Mechanics QA, which checks an assignment against the APA 7 student paper (formatting, comments and tracked changes left in, citations, numbers and language), as well as References from a file and the plagiarism and AI checks. Max, the $24-a-month plan, goes on to Theoretics QA and the Library of books; see the pricing page.
Which step each tool does
| Checklist step | The EdCitation tool for it | Plan |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Reading the brief | Check your paper | Free |
| 5. Retractions | Cite a source, per entry; Verify references, for the list | Free |
| 7 and 8. Matching and looking up | Verify references | Free |
| 8. APA formatting | Mechanics QA | Pro |
| 2, 3 and 6. Levels of evidence, confidentiality | None: your judgement and your module's hierarchy | None |
What it does not do: EdCitation never writes any part of an assignment, and it does not judge a source's level of evidence or whether it answers your clinical question. A patient case or a placement observation has no record to look up, so no tool can cite or check one.
Quick questions
Do nursing students have to use APA 7?
At the schools read for this guide, yes: Victoria University requires APA 7th edition for Bachelor of Nursing units, and Aberystwyth sets it for Healthcare Education. The University of Queensland Library says to check the course profile, whose instruction wins.
How do I cite a NICE guideline in APA 7?
Name the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence as author, give the year of the latest update, the title in italics with the guideline number in brackets, and the URL. NICE guideline NG136, updated in February 2026, is dated 2026.
Should a PubMed ID go in an APA reference?
No. APA's nursing references page says PMIDs are not included in APA Style references. Give the DOI as a link where the article has one, and keep the PMID for looking the article up: EdCitation's free APA citation generator accepts one.
Is a systematic review always the highest level of evidence?
Not on every hierarchy. JBI puts a systematic review of trials and a single trial both in Level 1 for effectiveness, and the Melnyk and Fineout-Overholt levels put a systematic review of qualitative studies at Level 5 of 7.
Can I cite a patient from my placement?
No. The NMC Code's duty of confidentiality covers everyone receiving care, so a patient is never named. Describe the case anonymously and cite published evidence for each claim.
References
- Aberystwyth University. (n.d.). Referencing for healthcare: APA 7th edition. https://libguides.aber.ac.uk/c.php?g=698694&p=5094362
- American Psychological Association. (2022). Personal communications. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/personal-communications
- American Psychological Association. (2026). Nursing student references. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/clinical-practice-references
- Cochrane. (n.d.). Cochrane Library. https://www.cochrane.org/products-and-services/cochrane-library
- EBSCO. (n.d.). CINAHL database. https://about.ebsco.com/products/research-databases/cinahl-database
- Ferris State University Library. (n.d.). Levels of evidence. https://ferris.libguides.com/ebp/levels
- Joanna Briggs Institute Levels of Evidence and Grades of Recommendation Working Party. (2013). JBI levels of evidence. Joanna Briggs Institute. https://jbi.global/sites/default/files/2019-05/JBI-Levels-of-evidence_2014_0.pdf
- Kataoka, Y., Banno, M., Tsujimoto, Y., Ariie, T., Taito, S., Suzuki, T., Oide, S., & Furukawa, T. A. (2022). Retracted randomized controlled trials were cited and not corrected in systematic reviews and clinical practice guidelines. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 150, 90–97. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2022.06.015
- Laver, K. E., Lange, B., George, S., Deutsch, J. E., Saposnik, G., Chapman, M., & Crotty, M. (2025). Virtual reality for stroke rehabilitation. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD008349.pub5
- National Center for Biotechnology Information. (2025, March 11). About PubMed. National Library of Medicine. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/about/
- National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. (2026). Hypertension in adults: Diagnosis and management (NICE Guideline NG136). https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng136
- National Library of Medicine. (n.d.). About MEDLINE. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medline/medline_overview.html
- Nursing and Midwifery Council. (2018). The Code: Professional standards of practice and behaviour for nurses, midwives and nursing associates. https://www.nmc.org.uk/globalassets/sitedocuments/nmc-publications/nmc-code.pdf
- University of Queensland Library. (2026). Referencing assignments: Nursing and midwifery. https://guides.library.uq.edu.au/subject/nursing-and-midwifery/referencing-assignments
- Victoria University Library. (n.d.). Bachelor of Nursing and Midwifery: Referencing. https://libraryguides.vu.edu.au/c.php?g=933246&p=6746885
- World Health Organization. (2026, August 11). Nursing and midwifery [Fact sheet]. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/nursing-and-midwifery