Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Google Quick Tip #12

Tired of always having to click the Back button to return to the list of search results in Google? You can set your preferences to open a result link in a new window.

G
OOGLE QUICK TIP #12

(1) Select the Preferences link to the right of the Google search box


(2) Scroll down the page and select the option next to the Results Window section



Four Big Ideas from the Carnegie Study on Medical Education (video)

This lecture by Dr. David Irby was present on April 3, 2008 for the Stanford School of Medicine Medcast lecture series.

David Irby, PhD, is
Vice Dean for Education and Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and a senior scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. In his lecture, he discusses a national effort by the Carnegie Foundation to assess the professional preparation of physicians and offer recommendations for how best to update this framework to meet our emerging healthcare needs.




PubMed Quick Tip #7

When viewing an abstract in PubMed, you can reveal the MeSH (medical subject heading) terms assigned to that article. Knowing these MeSH terms can help you find other search terms to use that can improve your search strategy.

(1) Change the abstract's display to CITATION



(2) The MeSH terms will appear below the abstract. (If the article was recently published, the MeSH terms may not have been assigned yet, but will be assigned shortly after publication.)

(3) If you are not sure what a MeSH term
means, you can click on the MeSH term to see its definition. Select the "MeSH" that appears in a pop-up box. You will be taken to the MeSH database to see the definition.



Videos on MayoClinic.com



The Mayo Clinic provides consumer health information at http://www.mayoclinic.com/.

In addition to health information, this site features short instructional videos. The videos run an average of 30 seconds to under two minutes.

The information is easy to understand for the layperson. For example, view this video that describes how antidepressants help relieve depression. Each video also has a transcript listed next to the video.

There are collections of videos pertaining to exercise:
There are also videos on how to prepare healthy recipes, such as this one for honey crusted chicken.


The videos are archived as well in alphabetical order. It would be nice if they were sorted by categories, but it's good to at least have a full listing of their videos. These videos are ideal for referral to patients as well as for personal education.

Medical Students' and Residents' Use of Facebook

Okay, so I finally caved in and set up a Facebook account in June. To date, I have inched up to a mere 74 friends. One of my Facebook friends, a cousin in college, has 759 friends! That is a testament as to how social networking tools have made their way into the daily lives, the daily minutes, of how students keep in touch.

With the explosive popularity of Facebook use among students, it is no surprise that issues concerning the appropriateness of what students choose to disclose on their personal profiles and photos that they post are starting to arise as these students graduate and enter the professional world.

The authors of the article below are from the College of Medicine and the College of Education at the University of Florida. As students who use Facebook, and as educators who teach these students, this article is a must read as it touches upon the implications of professionalism and how it is affected by the online personas that people create using social networking tools.

Ferdig, RE, Dawson, K, Black EW, et al.
Medical students' and residents' use of online social networking tools: Implications for teaching professionalism in medical education.
First Monday, Vol 13, No.9, Sept 2008.

ABSTRACT:
This study sought to determine if and how 501 medical students and 312 residents are using Facebook at a large university in the southeastern United States. Results reveal that medical students and residents are using Facebook and about two–thirds of users maintain public profiles. While there is variation in the types of information provide within profiles, many medical students seem unaware of or unconcerned with the possible ramifications of sharing personal information in publicly available online profiles even though such information could impact their professional lives. Thus, this study provides data based evidence that online tools such as social networking sites should become a part of the dialogue related to preparing future physicians to meet the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) professionalism competency.