Frontier Library

Daily POEMs

2011-10-28T11:57:00.001-04:00

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!

Health and Psychosocial Instruments (HaPI) Database

2011-10-21T10:59:00.000-04:00

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.

National Medical Librarians Month

2011-10-10T12:14:00.002-04:00

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!

Electronic Journals List Downtime

2011-06-21T11:44:00.001-04:00

Our Electronic Journals (AtoZ) List will be unavailable tonight from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time, due to system maintenance from EBSCO. If you think you will need links to journals during that time, and can't get them before or after, please contact us this afternoon. We'll see what we can do to get you direct access.

We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience.

National Library Week and Links of Interest

2011-04-14T21:44:00.000-04:00

This week we are celebrating National Library Week with a theme of "Create your own story @ your library."

To that end I'd like to share some links that tell a few stories...

Mapping Maternity Care and Birth Outcomes - this site tells a story that we are all too familiar with...the rising c-section rate and cost of maternity care. It provides a variety of statistics for the U.S. and other developed countries. The interactive state statistics are particularly interesting.

The CDC Division of STD Prevention has several publications available for free. Help tell patients and others about STD treatment guidelines, STD facts, and statistics. Some publications are available in Spanish as well.

Also from the CDC is a page on health literacy. This information is aimed at all people and organizations that communicate with people about their health. Some of this information is also broken down by state.

If you haven't checked out the Healthy People website, be sure to take a look. The list of topics and objectives for 2020 is here.

What stories do you have to tell?

New Journal Titles for 2011

2011-01-11T12:26:00.000-05:00

A new year, a new term, and now, new journal titles! The Frontier library has added the following titles for 2011:

Advances in Nursing Science
American Journal of Nursing
Advances in Neonatal Care
Critical Care Nursing Quarterly
Cancer Nursing
Clinical Nurse Specialist
Health Care Management Review
Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing
JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration
Journal for Nurses in Staff Development
Nursing Administration Quarterly
Journal of Wound, Ostomy and Continence Nursing
Breastfeeding Medicine
Nursing Science Quarterly
Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing
Journal of Transcultural Nursing
Diabetes Educator
Research in Nursing and Heatlh

All of these journals can be found in our AtoZ Electronic Journal list on the Find Articles page of the library website. Let us know if you have trouble accessing any of these titles.

National Library Week - Communities Thrive

2010-04-12T11:12:00.003-04:00

Today begins National Library Week, an annual celebration that highlights the value of all types of libraries and librarians. This year's theme is "Communities Thrive @your library." Libraries have long been integral to communities. They provide access to information for the entire community and also serve as meeting places and community centers. As we strive to build a community of inquiry here at Frontier, the library plays a central role in that process as well. Once you become a part of the Frontier community, you will always be a part of it, no matter where you may reside. But you are also a part of your home community. I thought we could take this opportunity to discuss libraries in your own community. Are you aware of the libraries in your community? If not, you might want to start by checking out www.worldcat.org. On their Find a Library page, you can enter a zip code or city name and see a list of libraries and the distance to them. Note that ALL types of libraries are shown, even school libraries, so you may need to refine by type on the left side of the screen:

Most communities have a public library, and those can be great community resources. They often have computer classes and story times for children as well as having Internet access and books and magazines. While they probably will not have the medical and nursing journals that you may rely on as an APN, they may be able to get articles via interlibrary loan. Note that hospital libraries will be listed under "corporate or special." Hospital libraries may not offer services to non-employees but it might be worth checking. Finally, the academic category will show you all of the college and university libraries in your area, including community colleges. If these institutions are public, they will almost always allow community patrons. Private colleges and universities will have different policies, but again, it is worth checking to see if they offer services to community residents.

Another option for library services for health professionals is an AHEC, Area Health Education Center. The AHEC program was started in the 1970s to support health professionals working with underserved populations by providing continuing education, information dissemination, and other professional support. There are 54 AHEC programs with more than 200 centers in the U.S. Find one near you using the National AHEC Organization's directory.

Another link you might find helpful is this list of Medical/Health Sciences Libraries on the Web, arranged by state, from Hardin Library for the Health Sciences at the University of Iowa.

So, what's a great library in your community?

NIH Consensus Development Conference on VBAC

2010-03-11T09:21:00.002-05:00

Over the past few days (March 8-10), the National Institutes of Health held a Consensus Development Conference on VBAC. Here are a few links that you might want to peruse:

The conference home page has links to the draft statement. NPR did a story on the conference on today's Morning Edition. They also have a news story on VBAC available.

Finally, you can follow the "back channel" conversation on Twitter for commentary and more links: http://twitter.com/search?q=%23nihvbac.

New and Interesting

2010-02-19T16:03:00.003-05:00

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.

ACOG Publications, Part II

2010-02-03T15:25:00.000-05:00

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.

ACOG Publications

2010-01-29T14:09:00.000-05:00

Ever wonder what the difference is between an ACOG Committee Opinion and an ACOG Practice Bulletin? Ever wonder what exactly people mean when they say "ACOG Guideline"? Well, I have. A little digging and talking to people more knowledgeable than myself revealed the answers. Practice Bulletins are subtitled "Clinical Management Guidelines for Obstetrician-Gynecologists" so these are what are popularly referred to as guidelines. According to the monthly list of titles, practice bulletins "provide obstetricians and gynecologists with current information on established techniques and clinical management guidelines." Committee Opinions, on the other hand, "are intended to provide timely information on controversial issues, ethical concerns, and emerging approaches to clinical management. They represent the considered views of the sponsoring committee based on interpretation of published data in peer-reviewed journals." Both Practice Bulletins and Committee Opinions are reviewed regularly to make sure the information is current. ACOG also publishes Technology Assessments, which provide an overview of technology in the field.

Even if you are aware of the distinction, these publications can sometimes be hard to find. Via the ACOG website, they are only available to members or subscribers. FSMFN is a subscriber, but our subscription only allows access to publications from the current year (you can find the login information in our AtoZ journal list; just search for "ACOG"). ACOG does provide open access to their List of Titles. These lists can serve as an index to the publications. You might want to keep these links handy:

Practice Bulletins: http://www.acog.org/from_home/publications/green_journal/PBListOfTitles.pdf
Committee Opinions: http://www.acog.org/from_home/publications/green_journal/COListOfTitles.pdf

Practice Bulletins and Committee Opinions are published in Obstetrics & Gynecology, aka The Green Journal. You'll notice that the lists above note which volume and issue of the journal they appeared in. With that information, you can then use Frontier's electronic subscription to Obstetrics & Gynecology to access the full text (please remember to log off of OVID when you're done,though). Please note that Practice Bulletins and Committee Opinions published prior to 2003 are not available through the electronic subscription. We have both the bulletins and opinions themselves and the Green Journal in print in Hyden. So if you are searching for a Practice Bulletin or Committee Opinion and can't find it electronically, let us know, and we'll scan the print copy for you.

Next up: how to search for a guideline when you're not sure one exists.

Welcome to the Frontier Library blog!

2009-12-16T17:16:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the Frontier Library blog! Here we will share updates about the library for the Frontier School of Midwifery and Family Nursing.