Started by a nursing student, for nursing students.
Nursing school runs on APA 7: a discussion post every week, a care plan, an evidence-based practice paper, and a capstone at the end. PERRLA helps nursing students get the formatting right on every one of them, from the title page to a reference for the CDC, so the time you have goes to the clinical content.
One account from ADN to DNP. Works in PERRLA Online, Microsoft Word, and Google Docs, in APA, MLA, and Turabian.
- Journal articles
- Paste the DOI. PERRLA fills the reference from the published record.
- Government health
- CDC, NIH, and other agency pages and reports, with the group author handled
- Clinical references
- DailyMed, StatPearls, NICE, UpToDate, Cochrane, and drug guides, each with its own form
- Textbooks
- Paste the ISBN. Edition and chapter fields are on the form.
- Everything else
- Guided forms for 47 source types, so you never guess at the order
Every assignment in the program, formatted the same way.
The rules don't change between a 300-word discussion post and a 30-page capstone. Neither does PERRLA.
Every week:
discussion posts
Start a Discussion Post, cite as you write, and the references build underneath. No title page. When it's done, Copy paper to clipboard and paste it into the course discussion board.
Midterm: care plans and evidence-based practice papers
Five heading levels, tables and figures, block quotes of 40 words or more, and a citation for every claim. PERRLA sets each one the way APA 7 expects and keeps the references page in sync as you edit.
The capstone, the MSN project, the DNP project
A table of contents, appendices, custom sections, and a library that holds every PDF and note from the program. Write in PERRLA Online, Word, or Google Docs; the library follows you.
Three sources nursing papers cite, and how PERRLA handles each one.
PERRLA has guided forms for 47 source types, so you never guess at the order.
10.1056/NEJMsa1001025
Needleman, J., Buerhaus, P., Pankratz, V. S., Leibson, C. L., Stevens, S. R., & Harris, M. (2011). Nurse staffing and inpatient hospital mortality. New England Journal of Medicine, 364(11), 1037–1045.
PERRLA fills the reference from the published record.
First citation: (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2024)
After that: (CDC, 2024)
The abbreviation goes in brackets the first time and alone after that.
DailyMed · StatPearls · NICE guidelines
UpToDate · Cochrane reviews · Drug guides
Each has its own form in PERRLA, so the fields you're asked for are the fields that source needs.
Formatted in APA 7 the way PERRLA does it. The article is real.
The CDC is a group author. PERRLA knows that.
Government health sources have their own rules. The agency is the author, the department is often the publisher, and the abbreviation goes in brackets the first time and alone after that.
Look up the page in PERRLA, or click Add to PERRLA from the Chrome extension while you're on cdc.gov or PubMed, and the reference is built with those rules in place. The first citation reads (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2024), and the next one reads (CDC, 2024).
The same goes for the clinical sources nursing programs lean on. DailyMed, StatPearls, NICE guidelines, UpToDate, Cochrane reviews, and drug guides each have their own form in PERRLA, so the fields you're asked for are the fields that source needs.
How to cite the CDC, NIH, and other government health sources in APA 7
Hand Hygiene on a Medical-Surgical Unit
Hand hygiene remains the single most effective step in preventing healthcare-associated infections, yet compliance on busy units still falls short of the standard (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2024). The CDC recommends alcohol-based hand rub before and after every patient contact unless hands are visibly soiled (CDC, 2024). Staffing shapes the rest of the picture: hospitals that assign more patients to each nurse see higher patient mortality (Aiken et al., 2002).
References
Aiken, L. H., Clarke, S. P., Sloane, D. M., Sochalski, J., & Silber, J. H. (2002). Hospital nurse staffing and patient mortality, nurse burnout, and job dissatisfaction. JAMA, 288(16), 1987–1993. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.288.16.1987
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2024, February 27). Clinical safety: Hand hygiene for healthcare workers. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.cdc.gov/clean-hands/hcp/clinical-safety/index.html
A group-author citation and reference, formatted in APA 7 the way PERRLA does it.
Nursing students, and the faculty who read their papers.
APA format was completely foreign to me. Using PERRLA takes all the stress out of formatting.
PERRLA was a game-changer for me when I was finishing Nurse Practitioner school!
I love PERRLA because I'm a little chaotic and have lots of things going on. It helps me be concise, have good recall, and have easy access. Bottom line – work smart and not hard!
I love PERRLA because when you have not been a student and you're going back to school, PERRLA helps you keep your thoughts organized and make you have perfect APA papers!
PERRLA for your nursing program.
Associate-degree nursing programs (ADN and ASN) get PERRLA free, permanently. BSN programs and up are $9.95 per student per year. Faculty and staff accounts are free, for life.
- Less faculty time on APA. Fewer small cumulative errors to mark, and less class time teaching the manual instead of the clinical content.
- Better papers. At Western Washington University, nursing students using PERRLA earned 9.5 out of 10 on APA against 7.5 without it.
- Show the work behind each paper. The Writing Timeline turns the saves PERRLA already makes into a summary of writing sessions and growth that faculty open from the title page. No extra cost.
- Nothing new to install. Students write in PERRLA Online, Word, or Google Docs. Rosters are a CSV of school email addresses.
Program directors can see PERRLA and the Writing Timeline in a 15-minute call. Pick a 15-minute slot or email [email protected].
- Stephen F. Austin State University
- A 6-month pilot with 250 RN-BSN and MSN students cut formatting errors dramatically and freed faculty grading time. PERRLA became a core tool in the MSN program.
- Western Washington University
- Faculty stopped teaching citation formatting in class. On an annotated bibliography, 9.5 out of 10 on APA with PERRLA, 7.5 without.
- Campbellsville University
- The online RN to BSN and MSN programs required PERRLA instead of offering it. Students wrote 130 papers with 489 references in the first 30 days.
A fourth case study follows a TRIO program at Western Nebraska Community College. All four, two pages each.
Nursing programs using PERRLA include
- Campbellsville University, School of Nursing
- Flathead Valley Community College, Nursing Program
- Galveston College, Nursing Program
- GateWay Community College, Nursing Program
- Jacksonville State University, Nursing Program
- Mount Vernon Nazarene University, Doctorate of Nursing Practice
- Northeastern Junior College, Nursing Department
- State Fair Community College, Associate Degree of Nursing Program
- Stephen F. Austin State University, DeWitt School of Nursing
- Southwestern Vermont Medical Center, Nurse Pipeline
- University of Central Arkansas, School of Nursing
- Western Washington University
Questions from nursing students and program directors
Does PERRLA handle the sources nursing papers use?
Can I use PERRLA for weekly discussion posts?
I've been out of school for years. Is PERRLA hard to learn?
Does PERRLA write any of my paper for me?
What does a site license cost for a nursing program?
Do students need to install anything? Does IT?
Your next nursing paper starts with the APA formatting already set.
Try PERRLA free for 7 days