Using the Biomedical Library & Its Resources:

Becoming Efficient Information Managers

Public Health & Epidemiology PHE 131

Winter 2010

Beverly Rossini

• Information Services Librarian• Outreach Librarian• Contact Information:

– Phone: (251) 460-6893– Fax: (251) 460-7638– Email: brossini@bbl.usouthal.edu

• Baugh Biomedical Library – Campus Site – Primarily supports the academic health

sciences (College of Medicine, College of Nursing & Allied Health)

University of South Alabama:Biomedical Library Sites

University of South Alabama:Biomedical Library Sites

• University Medical Center site – Primarily supports the clinical medicine

specialties-collection concentrates on patient care and treatment

– Consumer Health Resource Center

University of South Alabama:Biomedical Library Sites

• Children’s and Women’s Hospital site – Primarily supports obstetrics, gynecology, and

pediatrics – which is reflected by the library’s collection.

Lifelong Learning

• Evidence-Based Medicine• Combining clinical skills with evidence found in the

best, most current research

• Better informed general public• 8 in 10 Internet users go online to look up health

related information1

• Among Internet users who say their last health related search had an impact, 54% say the information led them to ask their doctors new questions or get a second opinion from another doctor1

1 Online health search 2006. Pew Internet & American Life Project. Available online at http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Online_Health_2006.pdf.

Evidence Based Medicine (EBM)

"Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. The practice of evidence-based medicine means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research.“2

Short definition: “the integration of best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values.”3

2Sackett DL, Rosenberg WMC, Gray JAM, Haynes RB, Richardson WS. Evidence-based medicine: what it is and what it isn't. BMJ 1996; 312: 71-2. 3Sackett, DL. Evidence-based medicine: how to practice and teach EBM. New York: Churchill-Livingston, 2000.

Evidence Based Medicine (EBM)Research Evidence

Since EBM’s focus in on patient-oriented, outcomes-based research as opposed to expert led medicine, the medical literature is searched and evaluated to determine what data is available that addresses questions that arise in clinical practice.

• Synthesized information sources (Dynamed, PIER, UptoDate, Clinical Evidence)• Meta-analyses (DARE, PubMed)• Systematic Reviews (Cochrane, PubMed)• Clinical Trials (PubMed)• Other types of research studies

PICO ?= Patient Intervention Comparison Outcome

Electronic Health Record - Computer system

Clinical Evidence , PIER, Dynamed, UpToDate

ACP Journal Club, Cochrane Library

PubMED Clinical Queries, guidelines

Original Studies

The professionally sponsored literature for medical practitioners acts as though each practitioner in each American community were supposed to be his own scholarly and scientific institute, screening, sifting, evaluating, assessing, and translating into practical terms the output of medical research that is reported in the periodical literature…The practitioner of course, is quite unable to live up to this myth. For that reason, he is likely to have recourse…to those sources that are willing to offer him the digested and preselected information that meets the needs.

Herbert Menzel, 1966

Keeping Current: The Challenges

• Keeping up-to-date with the newest advancements in medical research and treatmentsIn a set of journals pertinent to primary care physicians in 2002: 7,287 articles are published monthly. A physician trained in epidemiology would take an estimated 627.5 hours per month to evaluate articles pertinent to his practice.1

1Alper BS, , Hand JA, and Elliott SG. "How much effort is needed to keep up with the literature relevant for primary care?." Journal Medical o the Library Association. 92.4 (2004): 429-437.

• Information available through multiple sources in numerous formats.

Keeping Current: The Challenges

– In biomedical research, the amount of experimental data and published scientific information is “overwhelming and ever increasing, which may inhibit rather than stimulate scientific progress.”2

2 Weeber M, Kors JA, Mons B. Online tools to support literature-based discovery in the life sciences.” Briefings in Bioinformatics. 2005 September; 6 (3): 277.

Resources to Know

• SouthCAT• Electronic Journals• Dynamed, ACP PIER, Clinical

Evidence• Cochrane Library• PubMed• Clinical quidelines (guidelines.gov)• Google Scholar

Public Health & Epidemiology Library Research Class Page

http://southmed.usouthal.edu/library/ref/classesdescrip.htm