Finding Articles With International Pharmaceutical Abstracts (IPA) Health Information only a click away!

Click on the “Databases” link on the left side of the SHIRP website to get to the list of databases.

The databases available are listed in the center of the screen. Scroll down until you see IPA, and click on the heading.

The main search screen for IPA is made up of: 1) Search Box: allows you to search for specific words in the item records. 2) Limits: allow you to limit your results to items that fit specific criteria like publication year or language. More limits are available by clicking on “More limits”. 3) Search History: keeps track of what you’ve looked for and how many results you got

Our topic: medication reconciliation as it relates to patient safety. Our strategy: search for one concept at a time, and link them later using “Combine Searches”.

Type the first concept you are looking for in the search box, then click the “Search” button. The computer will look for records that contain those words.

The results of the search are listed in the search history.

Scroll up and repeat the process for the next concept – patient safety.

Our second search is added to the Search History.

Check off the searches you want to combine and click on the “AND” button. When you use AND your final results will only list articles that contain all of those words.

The results of the combined search are listed in the Search History. In this case, there are 54 records in our results. Click on “Display” or scroll down to see the results.

Click on the blue “Abstract” link to read the abstract for the article.

Getting your hands on the article Some of the entries in IPA have links to the article: to get to the article, click on the “OVID Full Text” link. The articles that don’t have a link may still be accessible through “Browse Journals A- Z” at If your article is not available from “Browse Journals A-Z” place a request using the “request an article” form on the SHIRP website. For example: Article #5 is available through Browse Journals A-Z, but a request would have to be placed for #25.

To see if a journal is accessible through SHIRP, click on the “E-Journals” link on the left of the SHIRP website.

Click on “Browse Journals A-Z”.

Search for journal titles using the search box.

There is more than one link for this journal. Pick a link that includes the date of the article, and click to access the electronic journal’s issue list.

Click through the links, progressing through the year, and issue until you get to the article. Click on the link to access the article.

Click on the issue you want.

Scroll down the page to find the article that you are interested in, then click on the PDF link to open the article.

Remember, if you run into problems while using IPA, or any other SHIRP resources, call Christine Neilson at Health Information only a click away!