Friday, October 28, 2011

Daily POEMs

October is almost over, but not quite! We still have a few days left of National Medical Librarians Month. I'd like to continue our celebration by discussing another little known resource, Daily POEMs from Essential Evidence Plus. Many of you may have used Essential Evidence Plus before (and if you haven't be sure to check it out!) but you may not know about the Daily POEMs Alert service. POEM stands for Patient-Oriented Evidence that Matters, and each one contains a clinical question, bottom line (answer), and reference, as well as information on the study design, funding, setting, and a synopsis. You can have these emailed to you daily.

Email message with Daily POEM

If you don't want to clog your Inbox, though, never fear! You can search within the POEMs on EE+ by choosing "POEMs research summaries" in the drop-down menu.


You can also browse the POEMs by date or topic by clicking on "POEMs Research Summaries" under "Browse Our Databases."

Here are some recent POEMs of interest, so you can get an idea of the topics addressed:
  • Oral steroids beneficial with antibiotics for chronic rhinosinusitis in children and adolescents
  • Outcomes of oxytocin regimens for augmentation of labor
  • Immediate insertion after uterine aspiration increases IUD use rate
In addition to the daily messages and database, a weekly podcast is available too!

I hope you'll consider using POEMs when you need to answer a clinical question!

Friday, October 21, 2011

Health and Psychosocial Instruments (HaPI) Database

In celebration of National Medical Librarians Month, we'd like to highlight some resources that you may not be familiar with.  The first resource we will feature is the Health and Psychosocial Instruments (HaPI) database.  This database provides information from journals about behavioral measurement instruments.  Please note that it does NOT provide the full-text of the instruments. Rather, it points the user to journal articles that either contain or discuss the instrument.  Limit your search to "primary source" for a better chance of the instrument being included in the article.


While the database record is pointing you to a journal article, it doesn't provide the full-text of the article either.  When you request an item via interlibrary loan from this database, you are requesting the journal article, not the instrument itself.  Some instruments are available directly from the database publisher, but a fee is charged.  If you are interested in obtaining an instrument this way, please contact us directly.



Other information that may be included in the instrument record is reliability, response options, references (to the primary source if it's a secondary source, for example), number of questions, and an abstract. Below is a sample record:


If you have questions about using HaPI, or any other database, be sure and contact the library.

Monday, October 10, 2011

National Medical Librarians Month

October is National Medical Librarians Month!  Medical Librarians are your ultimate search engine.  People tell us all the time that they searched for something for days and days...don't do that, call us!  We are here to help!


859-253-3637

To celebrate we'll be featuring library resources to help improve your searching all month.  Be sure to stay tuned!