Social Media in Clinical Practice by Bertalan Meskó [Book Review]

How to review a book on Medical Social Media written by an author, who has learned you many Social Media skills himself?

Thanks to people like Bertalan Meskó, the author of the book concerned,  I am not a novice in the field of Medical Social Media.

But wouldn’t it be great if all newcomers in the medical social media field could benefit from Bertalan’s knowledge and expertise? Bertalan Meskó, a MD with a  Summa Cum Laude PhD degree in clinical genomics, has already shared his insights by posts on award-winning blog ScienceRoll, via Twitter and Webicina.com (an online service that curates health-related social media resources), by giving presentations and social media classes to medical students and physicians.

But many of his students rather read (or reread) the topics in a book instead of e-learning materials. Therefore Bertalan decided to write a handbook entitled “Social Media in Clinical Practice”.

This is the table of contents (for more complete overview see Amazon):

1. Social media is transforming medicine and healthcare
2. Using medical search engines with a special focus on Google
3. Being up-to-date in medicine
4. Community sites Facebook, Google+ and medical social networks
5. The world of e-patients
6. Establishing a medical blog
7. The role of Twitter and microblogging in medicine
8. Collaboration online
9. Wikipedia and Medical Wikis
10. Organizing medical events in virtual environments
11. Medical smartphone and tablet applications
12. Use of social media by hospitals and medical practices
13. Medical video and podcast
14. Creating presentations and slideshows
15. E-mails and privacy concerns
16. Social bookmarking
17. Conclusions

As you can see, many social media tools are covered and in this respect the book is useful for everyone, including patients and consumers.

But what makes “Social Media in Clinical Practice” especially valuable for medical students and clinicians?

First, specific medical search engines/social media sites/tools are discussed, like (Pubmed [medical database, search engine], Sermo [Community site for US physicians], Medworm [aggregator of RSS feeds], medical smartphone apps and sources where to find them, Medical Wiki’s like Radiopaedia.
Scientific Social media sites, with possible relevance to physicians are also discussed, like Google Scholar and Wolphram Alpha.

Second, numerous medical examples are given (with links and descriptions). Often, examples are summarized in tables in the individual chapters (see Fig 1 for a random example 😉 ). Links can also be found at the end of the book, organized per chapter.

Fig 1. Examples represented in a Table

Third, community sites and non-medical social media tools are discussed from the medical prespective. With regard to community sites and tools like Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and Email special emphasis is placed on (for clinicians very important) quality, privacy and legacy concerns, for instance the compliance of websites and blogs with the HONcode (HON=The Health On the Net Foundation) and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), the privacy settings in Facebook and Social Media Etiquette (see Fig 2).

Fig. 2 Table from “Social Media in Clinical Practice” p 42

The chapters are succinctly written, well organized and replete with numerous examples. I specifically like the practical examples (see for instance Example #4).

Fig 3 Example of Smartphone App for consumers

Some tools are explained in more detail, i.e. the anatomy of a tweet or a stepwise description how to launch a WordPress blog.
Most chapters end with a self test (questions),  next steps (encouraging to put the theory into practice) and key points.

Thus in many ways a very useful book for clinical practice (also see the positive reviews on Amazon and the review of Dean Giustini at his blog).

Are there any shortcomings, apart from the minimal language-shortcomings, mentioned by Dean?

Personally I find that discussions of the quality of websites concentrate a bit too much on the formal quality (contact info, title, subtitle etc)). True, it is of utmost importance, but quality is also determined by  content and clinical usefulness. Not all websites that are formally ok deliver good content and vice versa.

As a medical  librarian I pay particular attention to the search part, discussed in chapter 3 and 4.
Emphasis is put on how to create alerts in PubMed and Google Scholar, thus on the social media aspects. However searches are shown, that wouldn’t make physicians very happy, even if used as an alert: who wants a PubMed-alert for cardiovascular disease retrieving 1870195 hits? This is even more true for a the PubMed search “genetics” (rather meaningless yet non-comprehensive term).
More importantly, it is not explained when to use which search engine.  I understand that a search course is beyond the scope of this book, but a subtitle like “How to Get Better at Searching Online?” suggests otherwise. At least there should be hints that searching might be more complicated in practice, preferably with link to sources and online courses.  Getting too much hits or the wrong ones will only frustrate physicians (also to use the socia media tools, that are otherwise helpful).

But overall I find it a useful, clearly written and well structured practical handbook. “Social Media in Clinical Practice” is unique in his kind – I know of no other book that is alike-. Therefore I recommend it to all medical students and health care experts who are interested in digital medicine and social media.

This book will also be very useful to clinicians who are not very fond of social media. Their reluctance may change and their understanding of social medicine developed or enhanced.

Lets face it: a good clinician can’t do without digital knowledge. At the very least his patients use the internet and he must be able to act as a gatekeeper identifying and filtering thrustworty, credible and understandable information. Indeed, as Berci writes in his conclusion:

“it obviously is not a goal to transform all physicians into bloggers and Twitter users, but (..) each physician should find the platforms, tools and solutions that can assist them in their workflow.”

If not convinced I would recommend clinicians to read the blog post written at the the Fauquier ENT-blog (refererred to by Bertalan in chapter 6, #story 5) entiteld: As A Busy Physician, Why Do I Even Bother Blogging?

SM in Practice (AMAZON)

Book information: (also see Amazon):

• Title: Social Media in Clinical Practice
• Author: Bertalan Meskó
• Publisher: Springer London Heidelberg New York Dordrecht
• 155 pages
• ISBN 978-1-4471-4305-5
• ISBN 978-1-4471-4306-2 (eBook)
• ISBN-10: 1447143051
• DOI 10.1007/978-1-4471-4306-2
• $37.99 (Sept 2013) (pocket at Amazon)

Related articles

• “Social Media in Clinical Practice” Handbook Is Published! (scienceroll.com)
• Social Media in Clinical Practice: Chapter 1, The Introduction (scienceroll.com)
• Here comes Bertalan Meskó’s book on ‘social media’ (aplaceofmind.ubc.ca)
• My Book, Social Media in Clinical Practice, To Be Released on the 8th of August! (scienceroll.com)

• Berci’s New Book Is A Winner (blogs.ubc.ca/dean/)

• Social Media in Clinical Practice: Chapter 3, Being Up-to-Date in Medicine (scienceroll.com)

Between the Lines. Finding the Truth in Medical Literature [Book Review]

In the 1970s a study was conducted among 60 physicians and physicians-in-training. They had to solve a simple problem:

“If a test to detect a disease whose prevalence is 1/1000 has a false positive rate of 5 %, what is the chance that a person found to have a positive result actually has the disease, assuming that you know nothing about the person’s symptoms or signs?” 

Half of the “medical experts” thought the answer was 95%.
Only a small proportion, 18%, of the doctors arrived at the right answer of 2%.

If you are a medical expert who comes the same faulty conclusion -or need a refresher how to arrive at the right answer- you might benefit from the book written by Marya Zilberberg: “Between the Lines. Finding the Truth in Medical Literature”.

The same is true for a patient whose doctor thinks he/she is among the 95% to benefit form such a test…
Or for journalists who translate medical news to the public…
Or for peer reviewers or editors who have to assess biomedical papers…

In other words, this book is useful for everyone who wants to be able to read “between the lines”. For everyone who needs to examine medical literature critically from time to time and doesn’t want to rely solely on the interpretation of others.

I hope that I didn’t scare you off with the abovementioned example. Between the Lines surely is NOT a complicated epidemiology textbook, nor a dull studybook where you have to struggle through a lot of definitions, difficult tables and statistic formulas and where each chapter is followed by a set of review questions that test what you learned.

This example is presented half way the book, at the end of Part I. By then you have enough tools to solve the question yourself. But even if you don’t feel like doing the exact calculation at that moment, you have a solid basis to understand the bottomline: the (enormous) 93% gap (95% vs 2% of the people with a positive test are considered truly positive) serves as the pool for overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

In the previous chapters of Part I (“Context”), you have learned about the scientific methods in clinical research, uncertainty as the only certain feature of science, the importance of denominators, outcomes that matter and outcomes that don’t, Bayesian probability, evidence hierarchies, heterogeneous treatment effects (does the evidence apply to this particular patient?) and all kinds of biases.

Most reviewers prefer part I of the book. Personally I find part II (“Evaluation”) as interesting.

Part II deals with the study question, and study design, pros and cons of observational and interventional studies, validity, hypothesis testing and statistics.

Perhaps part II  is somewhat less narrative. Furthermore, it deals with tougher topics like statistics. But I find it very valuable for being able to critically appraise a study. I have never seen a better description of “ODDs”: somehow ODDs it is better to grasp if you substitute “treatment A” and “treatment B” for “horse A” and “horse B”, and substitute “death” for “loss of a race”.
I knew the basic differences between cohort studies, case control studies and so on, but I kind of never realized before that ODDs Ratio is the only measure of association available in a case-control study and that case control studies cannot estimate incidence or prevalence (as shown in a nice overview in table 4).

Unlike many other books about “the art of reading of medical articles”, “study designs” or “Evidence Based Medicine”, Marya’s book is easy to read. It is written at a conversational tone and statements are illustrated by means of current, appealing examples, like the overestimation of risk of death from the H1N1 virus, breast cancer screening and hormone replacement therapy.

Although I had printed this book in a wrong order (page 136 next to 13 etc), I was able to read (and understand) 1/3 of the book (the more difficult part II) during a 2 hour car trip….

Because this book is comprehensive, yet accessible, I recommend it highly to everyone, including fellow librarians.

Marya even mentions medical librarians as a separate target audience:

Medical librarians may find this book particularly helpful: Being at the forefront of evidence dissemination, they can lead the charge of separating credible science from rubbish.

(thanks Marya!)

In addition, this book may be indirectly useful to librarians as it may help to choose appropriate methodological filters and search terms for certain EBM-questions. In case of etiology questions words like “cohort”, “case-control”, “odds”, “risk” and “regression” might help to find the “right” studies.

By the way Marya Ziberberg @murzee at Twitter and she writes at her blog Healthcare etc.

p.s. 1 I want to apologize to Marya for writing this review more than a year after the book was published. For personal reasons I found little time to read and blog. Luckily the book lost none of its topicality.

p.s. 2 patients who are not very familiar with critical reading of medical papers might benefit from reading “your medical mind” first [1]. 

Amazon Product Details

• Paperback: 170 pages
• Publisher: EviMed Research Press; 1 edition (May 17, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0985456205; ISBN-13: 978-0985456207
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)

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• Your Medical Mind. How to Decide What is Right for You [Book Review] (laikaspoetnik.wordpress.com)
  
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• New test spots more lung clots but seems to result in overdiagnosis (eurekalert.org)
• Long-term psychosocial consequences of false-positive screening mammography. (rinf.com)

Your Medical Mind. How to Decide What is Right for You [Book Review]

I enjoyed reading “Your Medical Mind” from start to end. The style of this book was light, but the content was not. Jerome Groopman, oncologist, and Pamela Hartzband, endocrinologist, are to be congratulated on their ability to write clearly about a difficult topic. They explain all aspects about making the right medical choices, in a way that is comprehensible to all.

What makes their book so enlightening is that Groopman and Hartzband illustrate each aspect of medical decisionmaking with real patient stories. In fact the entire book is largely based on interviews with scores of patients of different ages, of different economic status and with different medical conditions.

The authors also drew on research and insights from doctors, psychologists, economists and other experts to shed more light on forces that can aid or impede our thinking when we have to make those decisions.
For those who want to explore things further, there are 213 notes (appr. 80 pages!) and a bibliography of 20 pages at the end of the book.

The first chapter “Where am I in the numbers” deals… right… with numbers, or basic statistics. A topic that patients (and quite some doctors!) often find difficult to understand. This chapter explains Relative Risk Reduction (RRR), Control Event Rate (Basic Risk), Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) and Numbers Needed to Treat (NNT) without hardly mentioning these terms.

The authors illustrate these and other principles with the story of Susan. Susan is a bit overweight and has a high cholesterol “of the bad kind” (LDL). Her GP concludes: “Since you’re active and already follow a healthy diet, I think it is time for medication. Fortunately, we have a good treatment for this [statins]. Here is a prescription. I’ll see you again in a month”.

But Susan doesn’t take the prescription. Why? First Susan is a doubter and a minimalist. She wants the minimum necessary, certain that “less is more”.  For this is how she was raised. Second, Susan is very much like her father, who had a similar high cholesterol, never took a pill, yet lived a long, full and healthy life. Therefore she believes that for people like her these high levels of LDL-cholesterol are not necessarily dangerous. Third, she  meets an acquaintance who suffers from debilitating muscle pain as a side effect of the statins.

When Susan’s GP hears that she decided not to take her medicine, her face tightens in concern: “It s very important to take this medication. You really need it”. She explains that statin pills will lower her risk of a heart attack over the next 10 years by as much as 30 % [RRR]. She adds that the risk of side effects is very small and often reversible.

Sinds 30% less risk of myocardial infarction (heart attack, MI) sounds impressive, Susan promised her doctor to reconsider her decision. As many other people she searches the Web for medical information. After months (!) she finds a government-sponsored link with objective patient information and a 10-year heart attack risk calculator. By entering all the requested information, she finds out that her basic MI risk is 1%. This means that 1 of 100 (or 3 of 300) people with this level of risk will have a heart attack in the next 10 years (background risk without taking treatment).

Let’s apply that benefit to a group of 300 women like Susan, where 3 of them would have a MI without taking statins. If we treat them all, we would prevent one MI—because we prevent 1 MI in 3 women (30% RRR). The other 2 women would still have a MI despite taking the medicine. The remaining 297 would not have had a heart attack even without the medication, so they wouldn’t have benefited from taking it. Thus 300 persons with this background risk need to be treated to prevent one heart attack. This is the number needed to treat (NNR).

Research has shown that people respond most profoundly to “stories”. Statistics can help to merge science with stories and fit single anecdotes into the larger context of all people who are treated. Statistics (and “evidence” in general) allows people to make an informed choice. 

Susan’s story also illustrates that framing  is very important. When you hear that a statin lowers your risk by 30% (RRR), it sounds as if you are at 100% risk and thus have a great benefit. But reframing the effect as a chance of 1 in 300 persons to have a benefit, may shift the balance for you. Susan concluded that the benefits didn’t outweigh the risks. Others may look at it another way: If there is a chance I could be the one person out of the 300 who avoids a heart attack, then the statin is 100% effective for me. 

Pharmaceutic industries understand a great deal about how people decide whether to take a medicine. They frame information about benefit in the most favorable way and exploit the power of availability bias* using carefully crafted images and anecdotes, and giving implicit messages while  marginalizing side effects.

Various studies and patient stories discussed in the book clearly show that patients choose differently when they are given clearer information about benefits and risks. Surprisingly, their choice often differs from the treatment options the experts see as “best”.

As we have seen the attitude of the doctor and the way he/she frames the medical information also matters. Susan’s GP framed the information in such a way that it overemphasized the benefits of treatment with statins, the option she saw as “best”. This GP later refused Susan as a patient, because she didn’t follow her instructions. Her next doctor: “It is the old paternalistic way of dealing with patients. Ultimately you know, patients have final control of what goes on. (….) It is not like you just go: “Boom, boom, boom, here is the prescription”.

The irony is that most people will accept the default option: they assume that what is routinely recommended is best. If it turns out differently, however, they may feel strong regret. In contrast, if the risk is taken into account beforehand, people may experience side effects less seriously. Furthermore people have a tremendous ability to adapt.

The book learns us the differences between believers and doubters, maximalists and minimalists, naturalism and technology orientation and the importance of availability bias*, omission bias*, decisional conflict, loss aversion*, expected utility*, autonomy and control.

Our preferences about treatment, may depend on our personality, the way we were raised as kids and our previous experiences. This applies to both patients and doctors. As an example, the authors explain why one of them became a believer and a maximalist and the other a doubter and a minimalist. Until some bad experience with an aggressive and unsuccessful surgery made the maximalist a bit more risk-averse.

The book offers several examples of doctors  advocating treatments on basis of their beliefs or expertise. A surgeon wants to cure prostate cancer by surgery while focusing on the unacceptable sides of radiation, while radiation therapists emphasize unacceptable side effects of surgery. Yet others make a case for “watchful waiting”.
More than before, I realize that choices are highly personal and that I, too, have my own preferences. For instance, I tend to favor watchful waiting in case of low risk prostate cancer, possibly because I am a doubter in most respects, and have worked with Prof Schröder who supports watchful waiting. However, for some men this watchful waiting may become watchful worrying and they might just prefer to get the cancer out. Even at the cost of sexual and urinary function.

Interesting is also the notion that “the best” doctors or the “most renowned hospitals” may not always be the best for you. An expert who looks totally bored, saying you’re a “typical case” may give you an anonymous feeling. A nurse’s silent shrug when you express dismay about losing a lot of weight, may reinforce this sense. This can be a reason to clinch to your own community hospital and not choosing a large, bustling cancer center.

Another AHA moment for me was about end of life decisions, described in the touching chapter 8. The authors describe that nearly half of the patients were inconsistent in their wishes about what therapies they wanted, whether they had completed a living will or advance directive or not. This is because they often can’t imagine what they will want and how much they can endure when their condition shifts from healthy to sick and then to even sicker. On the other hand rigid sticking to directives may pose a dilemma to the carer. Are resuscitation and intubation allowed as temporary interventions if not meant to artificially sustain life?

In short, “Your Medical Mind” is an interesting and instructive book, that is not only of value for patients and carers, but also for doctors ànd future patients (and remember everyone is a patient sometimes).

Does this mean that “Your Medical Mind” is an “essential companion that will show us how to chart a clear path through this sea of confusion” as the book flap and introduction promise?

And is it true that the answer to the question “How do you know what is right for you?“ lies not with the experts, but within you?”

These seem too ambitious claims.

For a good decision process knowing your preferences and the forces that can influence your choice, is not enough. A good health literacy is important too. Apart from a chapter that deals with statistics, this book offers little info on that topic.

What about minimalistic naturalists who choose a homeopathic treatment for cancer? This choice might fit the medical mind of those patients, and of course they have every right to make their own decisions, but is it truly “right for them”?

I get the impression that the authors underestimate the value of “evidence”. They are very skeptical, not only about pharmaceutical companies, but also about recommendations in guidelines, whether they are evidence based or not.

In the examples all treatments are almost equally effective. This leaves a grey zone for where there is no black and white answer about when and how to treat. Often, some treatments are superior to others (for certain patient groups).

Thus, the authors give little attention to the importance of objective medical information itself, as a basis for decision making. They also pay no attention to shared decision making, as e-patient Dave emphasizes in his review.

Still, I loved the book. It completes my knowledge of EBM and information sources.

It also made me curious about another book by Groopman “How doctors think” , which has rapidly risen to the top of the New York Times bestseller list since its release in March 2007.  Dr Shock just reviewed it. Perhaps we should exchange our books….

Title: Your Medical Mind
Author: Jerome Groopman, M.D., Pamela Hartzband, M.D.
Publisher: The Penguin Press
Book: Hardcover, 320 pages
Buy: Amazon.com

Notes

• availability bias: overweighting evidence that comes easily to mind.
• loss aversion: the reluctance to risk side effects for what is pursued to be a small benefit
• expected utility = [probability x outcome) X (utility of outcome)
• omission bias: avoiding treatment because of anticipation of regret

Related articles

• A Book That Will Change ‘Your Medical Mind’ (npr.org)
• Being a patient is an unforgettable form of medical education (kevinmd.com)
• Individual Medicine, Best Practices, Mass Medicine (aleksandreia.wordpress.com)
• An Epidemic of Information (online.wsj.com)
• The secrets of medical decision-making (salon.com)
• Compassionate Medical Care Benefits Professionals, Patients, Students and the Bottom Line (psychologytoday.com)
• How much physician guidance do patients want with medical decisions? (kevinmd.com)
• The Best Study Design for Dummies (laikaspoetnik.wordpress.com – 2008/08/25/)
• Designing a Smarter Patient (online.wsj.com)
• Statins for Primary Prevention: the Debate Continues (forbes.com)

Searching Skills Toolkit. Finding the Evidence [Book Review]

Most books on Evidence Based Medicine give little attention to the first two steps of EBM: asking focused answerable questions and searching the evidence. Being able to appraise an article, but not being able to find the best evidence may be challenging and frustrating to the busy clinicians.

“Searching Skills Toolkit: Finding The Evidence” is a pocket-sized book that aims to instruct the clinician how to search for evidence. It is the third toolkit book in the series edited by Heneghan et al. (author of the CEBM-blog Trust the Evidence). The authors Caroline de Brún and Nicola Pearce Smith are experts in searching (librarian and information scientist respectively).

According to the description at Wiley’s, the distinguishing feature of this searching skills book,  is its user-friendliness. “The guiding principle is that readers do not want to become librarians, but they are faced with practical difficulties when searching for evidence, such as lack of skills, lack of time and information overload. They need to learn simple search skills, and be directed towards the right resources to find the best evidence to support their decision-making.”

Does this book give guidance that makes searching for evidence easy? Is this book the ‘perfect companion’ to doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, managers, researchers and students, as it promises?

I find it difficult to answer, partly because I’m not a clinician and partly because, being a medical information specialist myself, I would frequently tackle a search otherwise.

The booklet is in pocket-size, easy to take along. The lay-out is clear and pleasant. The approach is original and practical. Despite its small size, the booklet contains a wealth of information. Table one, for instance, gives an overview of truncation symbols, wildcards and Boolean operators for Cochrane, Dialog, EBSCO, OVID, PubMed and Webspirs (see photo). And although this is mouth watering for many medical librarians one wonders whether this detailed information is really useful for the clinician.

Furthermore 34 pages of the 102 (1/3) are devoted on searching these specific health care databases. IMHO of these databases only PubMed and the Cochrane Library are useful to the average clinician. In addition most of the screenshots of the individual databases are too small to read. And due to the PubMed Redesign the PubMed description is no longer up-to-date.

The readers are guided to the chapters on searching by asking themselves beforehand:

1. The time available to search: 5 minutes, an hour or time to do a comprehensive search. This is an important first step, which is often not considered by other books and short guides.
   Primary sources, secondary sources and ‘other’ sources are given per time available. This is all presented in a table with reference to key chapters and related chapters. These particular chapters enable the reader to perform these short, intermediate or long searches.
2. What type of publication he is looking for: a guideline, a systematic review, patient information or an RCT (with tips where to find them).
3. Whether the query is about a specific topic, i.e. drug or safety information or health statistics.

All useful information, but I would have discussed topic 3 before covering EBM, because this doesn’t fit into the ‘normal’ EBM search.  So for drug information you could directly go to the FDA, WHO or EMEA website. Similarly, if my question was only to find a guideline I would simply search one or more guideline databases.
Furthermore it would be more easy to pile the small, intermediate and long searches upon each other instead of next to each other. The basic principle would be (in my opinion at least) to start with a PICO and to (almost) always search for secondary searches first (fast), search for primary publications (original research) in PubMed if necessary and broaden the search in other databases (broad search) in case of exhaustive searches. This is easy to remember, even without the schemes in the book.

Some minor points. There is an overemphasis on UK-sources. So the first source to find guidelines is the (UK) National Library of Guidelines, where I would put the National Guideline Clearinghouse (or the TRIP-database) first. And why is MedlinePlus not included as a source for patients, whereas NHS-choices is?

There is also an overemphasis on interventions. How PICO’s are constructed for other domains (diagnosis, etiology/harm and prognosis) is barely touched upon. It is much more difficult to make PICOs and search in these domains. More practical examples would also have been helpful.

Overall, I find this book very useful. The authors are clearly experts in searching and they fill a gap in the market: there is no comparable book on “the searching of the evidence”. Therefore, despite some critique and preferences for another approach, I do recommend this book to doctors who want to learn basic searching skills. As a medical information specialist I keep it in my pocket too: just in case…

Overview

What I liked about the book:

• Pocket size, easy to take a long.
• Well written
• Clear diagrams
• Broad coverage
• Good description of (many) databases
• Step for step approach

What I liked less about it:

• Screen dumps are often too small to read and thereby not useful
• Emphasis on UK-sources
• Other domains than “therapy” (etiology/harm, prognosis, diagnosis) are almost not touched upon
  
• Too few clinical examples
• A too strict division in short, intermediate and long searches: these are not intrinsically different

The Chapters

1. Introduction.
2. Where to start? Summary tables and charts.
3. Sources of clinical information: an overview.
4. Using search engines on the World Wide Web.
5. Formulating clinical questions.
6. Building a search strategy.
7. Free text versus thesaurus.
8. Refining search results.
9. Searching specific healthcare databases.
10. Citation pearl searching.
11. Saving/recording citations for future use.
12. Critical appraisal.
13. Further reading by topic or PubMed ID.
14. Glossary of terms.
15. Appendix 1: Ten tips for effective searching.
16. Appendix 2: Teaching tips

References

1. Searching Skills Toolkit – Finding The Evidence (Paperback – 2009/02/17) by Caroline De Brún and Nicola Pearce-smith; Carl Heneghan et al (Editors). Wiley-Blackell BMJ\ Books
2. Kamal R Mahtani Evid Based Med 2009;14:189 doi:10.1136/ebm.14.6.189 (book review by a clinician)

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You don’t look like a librarian [book]

I just read an interesting book suggestion at the Dutch Blog “MOQUB’s Bibliotheek der Dingen” (2009/02/15): “Jij lijkt helemaal niet op iemand die in een bibliotheek werkt” or “You don’t look like a librarian“.

The title of the blog post just dragged me in. As many librarians I don’ t think I look like a librarian, and I don’t think I behave like one (except for the occasional “shhht”). In fact I know little nothing of cataloguing, interlibrary loans and other typical librarian things (I started my career as researcher).

“You don’t look like a librarian” appeared to refer to a book with that title and the subtitle. “Shattering Stereotypes and Creating Positive New Images in the Internet Age”, written by Ruth Kneale

The following questions are addressed: “How pervasive are such stereotypes in the digital era, how are they changing, and how do they affect our daily work, our careers, and the future success of the profession? What can we do to defeat tired old perceptions and create positive new images? In addition to presenting the results of a 1,000+-respondent survey and interviews with opinionated librarians across the spectrum, Kneale draws on published literature and lively discussions from her website” (www.librarian-image.net). According to the publisher, the result is a unique, entertaining, and eye-opening look at librarian stereotypes and their real-world consequences in the Internet Age. As off March 30 (2009) you can order it at http://books.infotoday.com. It costs less than $30

ISBN 978-1-57387-366-6

Internet Cool Tools for Physicians [book]

The well known medical librarian-geek David Rothman of Davidrothman.net contributed to a (probably) very cool book:

Internet Cool Tools for Physicians
Rethlefsen, Melissa L., Rothman, David L., Mojon, Daniel S.

Bibliographic information: 2009, XIV, 154 p. 79 illus., Softcover
ISBN: 978-3-540-76381-9

It can be obtained from amazon.com or from Springer Publishing. It costs appr. $30.

I immediately wanted to order it, but even in the US it is not available for another month….

Sources:

• Twitter: search.twitter.com: tweets of @berci, @allergynotes and @laikas
  
• Davidrothman.net: “The Book” (blogpost)
• Springer.com: more info on the content.
  

Minder uitleningen door internet

Gelezen: Amstelveens Weekblad, 28-5-2008

Onder invloed van toenemend gebruik van internet leent Bibliotheek Amstelveen minder boeken uit. Het totaal aantal uitleningen daalde vorig jaar met 4%, maar dit kwam geheel op het conto van informatieve boeken, vooral die met gezondheidsinformatie. Daarentegen bleven uitleningen van fictie nagenoeg gelijk en boeken over koken, geschiedenis e.d. onverminderd populair.

De invloed van internet manifesteert zich ook op een andere manier: 42% van de verlengingen en 28% van de reserveringen vinden nu plaats langs digitale weg. Het digitaal aanvragen en uitlenen van muziek gaat in de toekomst belangrijker worden.

Opvallend, maar ook wel verklaarbaar dat juist gezondheidsinformatie steeds meer via het internet gezocht wordt. Er zijn vele gezondheidssites, en de informatie is veel actueler èn sneller te vinden dan in boeken. Ik zat gisteren nog met een medische vraag die ik echt in 5 seconden beantwoord zag op internet, op een tijdstip dat de bibliotheek allang dicht was.

Dat was toch wel heel anders in de tijd dat je het moest stellen met een (oppervlakkige en slecht doorzoekbare) medische encyclopedie thuis en je voor elke andere zoekactie overdag op je fiets naar de bieb moest. Maar dat was dan nog wel zo’n klein filiaal om de hoek met ruime openingstijden.

De ander kant van de medaille is wel dat lang niet alle informatie op internet betrouwbaar is. Hoe vaak beweren mensen niet dat (wetenschappelijk) bewezen is dat een of andere middeltje goed werkt. Hebben ze het van een of andere (gekleurde) commerciële of persoonlijke internetsite.

Er ligt nog een schone taak om mensen te leren hoe goed op internet hun weg te vinden en het kaf van het koren te scheiden. Een schone taak, maar voor wie?

Bovenstaande informatie kunt u ook vinden in het jaarverslag van 2007 van Bibliotheek Amstelveen.

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Read in a local newspaper (2008-05-28).

Our Public Library noticed a decline in book lending. Interestingly, this was not due to a decreased borrowing of adult fiction or books on history and cooking. It was entirely due to a declined lending of informative books, especially those on health information. Presumably because of the increased use of internet for this purpose.

Laika in letters (van boekomslagen)

Ik las net een berichtje op schwitters’ weblog dat je op de website van amaztype/ je naam in (tekst) met plaatjes in de vorm van bijvoorbeeld boekomslagen kunt maken.

Dat kan alleen als je naam in de titel van een boek voorkomt. Nou ik heb het meteen geprobeerd, en ja het werkt hoor. Leuk!

Hier kun je live mijn naam bekijken

Week 5: Librarything deel 1 (werk)

Ik las laatst op een blog (ik niet meer welke, dus ik kan helaas niet backtracken) dat met week 5 en met name met librarything pas het echte bibliotheekwerk begon.

Misschien geldt dat voor veel bibliotheken, openbare dan wel speciale, maar voor biomedische (en andere beta?-) bibliotheken gaat dat niet op. We nemen steeds meer ons toevlucht tot wetenschappelijke artikelen en dan niet meer in de gedrukte tijdschriften, maar de electronische formats. Deze doorzoeken we doorgaans via biomedische databases als PubMed.

We hebben nog wel boeken in de bieb, maar dat zijn met name studieboeken, tekstboeken, handboeken en proefschriften. Vooral studenten maken er nog veel gebruik van. Specialisten hebben meestal enkele bijbels in hun eigen kast staan.

Dat komt omdat er in de biomedische wetenschap veel onderzocht en gepubliceerd wordt. Boeken over actuele medische onderwerpen verliezen hun nieuwswaarde snel.

Onze bibliotheek past zich aan, steeds meer boekenstellingen verdwijnen en maken plaats voor computers, studietafels en zitzakken. Onze bibliotheek wordt van een echte boekenbibliotheek tot een studiezaal tot (in mijn ogen bijna) een hangplek voor jongeren. Ons budget gaat allang niet meer zitten in boeken, maar meer in de aanschaf van bestanden en electronische tijdschriften. Ons werkt verschuift van catalogiseerder en afstoffer naar zoeker, adviseur en leraar.

Dit wordt wel mooi geillustreerd, bedacht ik net, door de Cochrane Library. Anders dan de naam doet vermoeden is dit geen bibliotheek maar een verzameling van databases, waaronder de Cochrane database of Systematic Reviews.

Nee helaas, Librarything heeft ons als medische bibliotheek heel weinig te bieden.