Friday, February 19, 2010

New and Interesting

There have been so many interesting articles and links come across lately that I haven't been able to keep up with posting them all, so I thought I would do a round-up here.  There should be something for everybody!

NPR's Fresh Air interview with Randi Hutter Epstein, author of Get Me Out: Making Babies Through The Ages. - This page contains an excerpt from the book as well as the interview.  Epstein was also interviewed on NPR's All Things Considered.

The Joint Commission (hospital accrediting agency) issued a Sentinel Event Alert, which identifies sentinel events, describes their common underlying causes, and suggests steps to prevent occurrences in the future, on Preventing Maternal Death.

This may not be new to some, but the National Conference of State Legislatures has a page on breastfeeding laws for all states.

In nursing education news, the National League for Nursing released Notable Findings from NLN Annual Survey of Schools of Nursing.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

ACOG Publications, Part II

In the last post we discussed the basics of ACOG publications.  The indexes for the Practice Bulletins and Committee Opinions will help you know where to find them.  But what if you don't know the title of the guideline of interest?  What if you don't know if there is a guideline or not?

As I mentioned in the last post, Practice Bulletins and Committee Opinions are published in Obstetrics & Gynecology (the Green Journal).  As part of that publication, they are indexed in MEDLINE as articles.  This means that they are searchable!  When you search MEDLINE via EBSCOhost, you can search for ACOG in the corporate author field. 



Remember that EBSCOhost displays the results in reverse chronological order, so the most recent publications will be at the top.
If you only want to see Practice Bulletins, you could search for ACOG in the corporate author field and Practice Bulletin in title field.



Finally, you could add a term in the third box that relates to the topic on which you need a guideline.  Remember, though, as with any search, that the term you use may not be the same one that the authors have used.  For example, searching for a practice bulletin on ultrasound gets no results.  In the guideline on that topic, ACOG uses the term ultrasonography.  Think about your search terms carefully.

If you need assistance finding ACOG publications or anything else, be sure to contact the library!

UPDATE:  One thing I forgot to mention:  When searching EBSCOhost for guidelines, please remember that there is a delay between publication and indexing in EBSCOhost.  If you're looking for something that has just been released, it may not be available in EBSCOhost yet.