Medical Education Literature Searching

Deliberate Practice: How to Develop Expertise

2011-08-11T15:11:00.000-07:00

We all want to be great at something. Developing true expertise at a skill requires "deliberate practice". Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson, currently at Florida State University, has been a pioneer and at the forefront of research on expertise. His research has overlapped into medical education with at least 15 publications in PubMed specific to medicine.

Take your first bite into the apple of Ericsson's research by reading his 2007 article in the Harvard Business Review:

Ericsson, K., Prietula, M. J., & Cokely, E. T. (2007). The Making of an Expert. Harvard Business Review, 85(7/8), 114-121. (for a printable copy of the article, click here.)

How can you not be drawn in to read this article when you see the following opening sentence?

"New research shows that outstanding performance is the product of years of deliberate practice and coaching, not of any innate talent or skill."

It's rather refreshing to know that we have the potential to be experts at something even if we weren't "just born with it". All one needs is about ten years, or roughly 10,000 hours, to practice a skill deliberately, a mentor or coach to provide feedback, and more time to practice, refine, and tune your skills.

You can a get good overview of his ideas of how deliberate practice develops expertise in medicine by reading his 2008 article:

Ericsson, K A. (2008). Deliberate practice and acquisition of expert performance: a general overview. Academic emergency medicine, 15(11), 988-94.

One of his pivotal articles on deliberate practice was written in 1993 while he was at the University of Colorado at Boulder. This paper would be well worth the read if you are interested in this topic because it has been cited over 2167 times according to Google Scholar!

Ericsson KA, Krampe RT, Teschromer C. (1993) The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological review, 100(3), 363-406.

Take heart that if you love something enough to want to excel in it, you hopefully by now have already clocked in or nearing your 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. Fire up the stopwatch and off you go!

NOTE:
Still can't get enough about this topic of deliberate practice? Read Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers about the story of success.

"What Angry Birds Can Tell Us About Educating the Next Generation of Physicians"

2011-07-06T15:15:00.000-07:00

In September 2011, Catherine Reinis Lucey, MD, will be joining the UCSF campus as our new Vice Dean of Education in the School of Medicine. Dr. Dave Irby is her predecessor in this position. Dr. Lucey brings with her expertise from the work she has done as the interim dean and vice dean for education at the Ohio State University (OSU) College of Medicine and associate vice president for health sciences education for the OSU Office of Health Sciences.

Click on image to view video

I recently happened upon a presentation that Dr. Lucey gave as part of AcademiX, an education series sponsored by Apple highlighting mobile technologies in higher education.

She bases her ideas of using mobile technologies in medical education on the example of the popularity of the mobile app Angry Birds. She discusses how to engage medical students through interactive learning on a mobile device.

Below is my summary of her key presentation points:

* In the age of "technology assisted learning", we learn best when at point of need (ie, when treating a patient)

* Utopia of medical education: Create the expert physician

* Deliberate Practice - concept for developing expertise (by K. Anders Ericsson), basis for "Outliers" (book by Malcolm Gladwell)

* Developing expert performance requires:
(1) increasing complex challenges
(2) immediate feedback and coaching
(3) time to practice, fail, practice, improve

* The science and power of motivation:
Having a cycle of challenge -- Allowing time for correction -- Time for reinforcement -- A time rechallenge

* Example: Computer games
(1) engaged user challenged to master skills in each level
(2) the device becomes the coach by allowing/denying passage/progress to next level based on skills learned

Examples of ideas generated at Ohio State University School of Medicine -

(1) "Angry" Mammograms app
-radiology training for reading mammograms
-provides levels of complexity & nuances
- tiered in difficulty
- develops pattern recognition

(2) "Angry" Heart sounds
- auditory learning
- reinforce through repetition, like listening to pop music over and over to learn the melody and lyrics

Goal - to embed mobile devices into medical curriculum to increase efficiency in learning in the process of creating the expert physician.

* Presentation video at http://tinyurl.com/3qvjznt
* Presentation slides at http://tinyurl.com/3ptfuon
* Dr. Lucey's bio at http://tinyurl.com/3oktlaa

Check out previous postings from my blog that relate to gaming apps for medical education topics - http://mededlit.blogspot.com/search/label/games

Medical Education Subject Guide: Your Go-To Resource

2011-07-06T15:13:00.000-07:00

Need ideas of where to read up on the latest medical education research? Have a brilliant manuscript describing your curricular innovations but not sure where to publish? Need to find multimedia resources for medical education? Looking for curricular objectives to help guide your medical education project?

Look no further than the Medical Education Subject Guide available on the UCSF Library's website. The direct URL to this guide is at http://guides.library.ucsf.edu/meded.

OR you can navigate from the Library's website from the Classes, Consulting, & Help dropdown menu by selecting the Subject Guides listing. The Medical Education guide is listed alphabetically on the complete guides page.

Below is a snapshot of the Medical Education Subject Guide

(1) Browse the yellow tabs to explore the Library's resources available to assist in your medical education research needs.

(2) Read the latest published medical education research by UCSF medical educators.

(3) Download PDF tipsheets summarizing literature searching tips for how to search PubMed and other key databases geared to medical education.

(4) Contact me via chat, email, or phone from the right margin of the guide.

Please feel free to send me any suggestions you have for content you'd like to see on this subject guide. Bookmark this site today! http://guides.library.ucsf.edu/meded

The Future of Medicine TED Talk

2011-06-15T21:59:00.000-07:00

If you haven't gotten a taste of a TED Talk lately, here's one to inspire us towards the vision of how doctors are and will be treating patients with the exponential growth in technologies now available.

Watch oncologist, Dr. Daniel Kraft, a physician scientist, give his April 2011 TED Talk, on "Medicine's future? There's an app for that"

Tips for Teaching Millennials

2011-05-18T13:11:00.001-07:00

If you are reading this blog post, chances are you are (a) teaching millennials (b) a parent of a millennial (c) a millennial. Whichever category you fall into, as an educator, we all want our students to look as eager as this child does in class.

Below are tips condensed from their original sources. Visit the links to the original sources to see the very helpful full details related to each tip listed below.

"7 Techniques for Teaching Generation Y Students"
(see full article at http://tinyurl.com/3srwrpx)

Characteristic #1: They are technosavvy.

Recommendation: Don't talk down to them...In other words, you are a guide, a coach; you are not the Computer God in the classroom anymore.

Characteristic #2: They have short attention spans.

Recommendation: Keep it short and sweet... Use relevant examples or you will lose them.

Characteristic #3: They filter data out quickly.

Recommendation: Make your topic introductions sizzle...Introduce your topics so compellingly that your GenY students cannot help but be interested.

Characteristic #4: They multitask very well.

Recommendation: Don't get offended at other activities... Doesn't necessarily mean that you've lost their attention.

Characteristic #5: They consume information quickly.

Recommendation: Keep up the pace... As long as you are presenting the material clearly, you can almost never go too quickly for your GenY students.

Characteristic #6: Information must apply directly to them or you will lose them.

Recommendation: Customize the presentation directly to students' needs...Ask students, "What is it that you are hoping to learn today?"

Characteristic (Challenge)#7: Teaching Generation Y and Mixed Groups

Recommendation: Use body language and other clues to balance mixed groups...Simply ask the group, "How is this pace for you?" Or, "Would you like to practice this concept?"

"Generation Y - The Millennial Generation"

from Generational Learning Styles by Julie Coates. Published by LERN Books, a division of Learning Resources Network (LERN), 2007.
(see full details at http://tinyurl.com/dkbmwt)

Develop opportunities for experiential learning.
Encourage the development of learning communities.
Provide lots of structure.
Provide lots of feedback.
Use technology.
Make it fun.
Incorporate games.
Be relevant.
Utilize their talents.
Present the big picture.
Allow for creativity and be creative.
Offer multiple options for performance.
Be visual. This group is the most visual of all learning cohorts.
Be organized.
Be smart.
Be fair.
Recognize the need for social interaction.
Remember, talk is essential.
Structure a learning environment that demands respect and positive reinforcement.
Tie learning to actions.
Think positively.
Be clear and precise.
Allow focus time.
Talk is critical.
Enhance procedural memory with movement.
Make learning relevant.

Using Mind Mapping as a Teaching Tool

2011-02-26T22:07:00.000-08:00

How many of you remember the grade school exercise of diagramming sentences? How many of you can claim that you enjoyed the exercises? Very few of you out there, I would guess.

To this day, if you were to ask me how I know that the subject comes before the predicate followed by the complement, I would have no good answer for you. However, I am able to write and read a sentence and know that it is written in proper English grammar. My fifth grade teacher would be beaming with pride that I am able to intuitively retain the grammar she taught me decades ago.

So what does this all have to do with mind mapping? Wait a second...what IS mind mapping. It is a way to visualize a concept by drawing out the relationships between several ideas. Here is a bare bones example of how I used mind mapping to brainstorm what my breakfast menu could look like.

Click on images below to see larger views
.

On a more complex level, you can use mind mapping as a study and teaching tool. Below is a mind map created by allergist and immunologist Dr. Dimov and colleagues at the University of Chicago and LSU to diagram the concept of adhesion molecules.

To find out more about how to use mind mapping as a teaching tool, you should read this article written by a fourth-year medical student in the UK:

Edwards, S, & Cooper, N. (2010). Mind mapping as a teaching resource. The clinical teacher, 7(4), 236-9.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Modern mind mapping has been around since the mid-1970s, having been developed in its current form by Tony Buzan. It works by taking information from several sources and displaying this information as key words in a bright, colourful manner. Mind maps have been described as an effective study technique when applied to written material.

CONTEXT: This paper looks at how to use mind mapping as a teaching resource, and was written as a result of the recent undergraduate 'Doctors as Teachers' conference at The Peninsula Medical School. INNOVATION: Mind mapping is a technique not often used or considered by many teachers. This paper looks at how a busy clinical teacher can apply this technique in a practical, useable way. This allows topics to be more interesting to students and makes both learning and teaching more enjoyable.

IMPLICATIONS: Mind mapping has many potential applications to clinical education, and can be adapted to many situations. It can be used as a teaching resource, as an aid to preparing and reviewing lectures, and the technique allows notes to be written and reviewed quickly, and most importantly enables information to be easily updated. Mind mapping can be used in many situations including problem-based learning, small-group teaching, in a one-to-one context, as an examination tool and for personal revision.

By training yourself to mind map the material you need to learn or teach, your brain will begin to integrate the information into a more second nature understanding. In this way mind mapping is like diagramming sentences, but a whole lot more enjoyable.

Be sure to check out my previous blog post about free and easy to use mind mapping tools. There are several sophisticated mind mapping software that you can purchase as well. Go forth and map!

Facebook and Doctor-Patient Relations

2011-01-31T22:58:00.001-08:00

As of January 2011, Facebook has over 600 million active users. This breaks down to an average of at least 1 in 12 people in the world have a Facebook account. With these odds, it's inevitable that the paths of patients and doctors should eventually intersect on Facebook.

A real dilemma has arisen: Patients have found their physicians on Facebook and have requested to be friends with them.

Because of the personal information that can be found on Facebook, it seems intuitive that a doctor should not accept a friend request from a patient. But with no hard and fast guidelines, what is a doctor to do? Facebook reveals too much of what is personal and private that a physician, and a patient, would not particularly want to know about the other.

In the past two years, there have been a few opinion pieces published in medical journals addressing the issue of whether or not doctors should accept patients' friend requests:

Grover, M. (2010). Defining the patient-physician relationship in the era of facebook. Academic medicine, 85(8), 1262-.

Jain, S H. (2009). Practicing medicine in the age of Facebook. The New England journal of medicine, 361(7), 649-51.

Lacson, S M, Bradley, C, & Arkfeld, D G. (2009). Facebook medicine. Journal of rheumatology, 36(1), 211-.

As of November 2010, the Australian Medical Association and their related Australian and New Zealand associations are in the forefront of setting guidelines for physician use of social networking sites such as Facebook.

[View the guidlelines at http://ama.com.au/socialmedia].

This initiative was in response to the fact that some physicians have posted negative comments and even the names of some of their patients on Facebook. This clearly crosses the boundaries of professionalism. These opinion pieces and guidelines should set the stage for active discussion in the medical profession and medical schools of how physicians should or should not interact within the world of social media. Feel free to put in your two cents in the comments section below.

The American Medical Association actually does have a short statement on their website about professionalism and social media. Check it out at http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/meeting/professionalism-social-media.shtml

Happy Holidays 2010

2010-12-21T15:20:00.001-08:00

Wishing you a very Happy Holidays and hope that 2010 was good to you. If not, we've got 2011 to give it another go!

Here's a little diddy to help you get geared for a quiet workweek between Christmas and New Year's.

May your 2011 be filled with continued opportunities to live, learn, and pass on your knowledge!

Google's Tech Quick Tip Videos

2010-12-10T13:24:00.001-08:00

I don't know if you're like me, but if anyone in your family thinks that you have some level of tech savvy, you end up being the go-to person for tech troubleshooting for all things large and small.

For example, 20% of the time when my dad comes over to visit and is checking his email on my computer, he'll exclaim, "What happened to my bookmarks?!" Then I'll take a deep breath and remind him that his bookmarks are on HIS computer at home, and the ones on mine are specific to my computer alone.

Well, help is on the horizon now that the young techies at Google have created a fun and useful series of videos at TeachParentsTech.org. The website's name pretty much says it all.

These incredibly short and to the point videos all run under one minute. One of my favorite features is at the end of every video there is a childhood photo of the presenter with their parents.

Tips range from very basic (ie, how to copy and paste, or how to increase text size) to skills that everyone, not just parents, can appreciate (ie, how to take a screenshot (see below)). A lot of the tips are geared towards Mac users, but some do cover tips for PCs.

Feel free to navigate the TeachParentsTech.org website for more videos, or simply browse the related videos in the YouTube right menu after viewing one of their videos.

Share this news with your parents and other frequent tech-frantic but loving family member or friends. They'll thank you for it, and you can thank the folks at Google for making our lives easier.

UCSF's New Teaching & Learning Center opening in January

2010-12-08T11:11:00.001-08:00

The brand new state of the art Teaching & Learning Center will be opening its doors in January 2011. The TLC, housed on the second floor of the UCSF Library, will foster interprofessional health education.

This new facility is where students will practice their clinical skills, ranging from working with standardized (actor) patients, to working with simulation models for clinical procedures, and to telemedicine training. The TLC will be the new home as well for the Kanbar Center for Simulation, Clinical Skills and Telemedicine Education.

The project is state funded by Telemedicine and PRIME-US Education Facilities initiative as a result of California State Proposition 1D. PRIME-US is a UCSF specific Program In Medical Education for the Urban Underserved.

In addition to clinical skills learning spaces, there are also seminar rooms, a computer lab, media development center, and community spaces for group discussions and collaborative work. Seminar and classrooms are equipped with multiple large flat panel screens, and high definition video recorders for telecasting with remote learners and for recording class content. Teaching spaces have retractable walls to expand to accomodate different class sizes and equipped with modular furniture to allow for easier collaborative learning.

The TLC will open the first week of January. Come take part in the open house activities the week of January 18th. More info at http://tlc.library.ucsf.edu/ . You will not be disappointed, plus, enjoy views of the cityscape and Golden Gate Bridge.

PubMed's Video Tutorials

2010-11-30T16:30:00.001-08:00

Need some answers for how-to's with PubMed, but the librarian isn't available to help? Then you should check out online tutorials put together by the folks at the National Library of Medicine who run PubMed's content.

On PubMed's homepage, select the PubMed Tutorials link under the Using PubMed section below the search box. That will take you to a collection of "Quick Tours", which are narrated tutorials.

Good to know that there are multiple sources of help out there for how to efficectively use PubMed.

25 Basic Styles of Blogging

2010-11-24T12:15:00.001-08:00

Are you an active blogger? A newbie blogger? Only in the consideration stage of becoming a blogger? If you are any of these, this presentation gives some very helpful tips on the multiple types of blogging styles that can engage your readers.

Each style is rated by:

(1) Suggested frequency of postings
(2) The "Buzz Index" - how likely the posting will be linked to and commented on
(3) Difficulty level in creating each posting style

My personal opinion is that you should use any combination of several styles to make your blog interesting and engaging with your audience. No one style is dominantly the best. The ratings will help you determine which styles you should consider using most.

The 25 Basic Styles of Blogging ... And When To Use Each One

View more presentations from Rohit Bhargava.

The presentation author, Rohit Bhargava, is Senior Vice President of 360 Digital Influence Group at Ogilvy, a large global advertising company.

May these tips help guide you through your blogging adventures!

Medical Mnemonics Apps

2010-10-29T22:22:00.001-07:00

So much to memorize, so little time. Is that the story of your medical school life?

Well, the NerdcoreLearning Board Review Medical Mnemonics app has come to your rescue. This app is available for $0.99 at the iTunes Apps store online. The high-yield content has been selected by attending physicians and students to provide an extensive collection of easily browsable topics and organs systems.

In addition to mnemonics, the app also provides news feeds from the Nerdcore Learning website.

Special thanks to first-year med student Asya Ofshteyn for pointing me to the Nerdcore app.

Another mobile resource is available from Medical Mnemonics.com. It is compatable with Palm OS and is also available as a browsable website and PDFs are available compiling the mnemonics.

Okay, enough talk for now, go forth and learn!

Team-Based Learning - Is It for You?

2010-10-29T12:25:00.000-07:00

Team-based learning (TBL) has steadily gained momentum in the field of education. Back in the late 1970's, Larry Michaelsen, a Professor of Management, then of Oklahoma State University, and now of University of Central Missouri, first termed TBL and showed it to be an effective mode of teaching students in small groups of ideally 4 to 7 students per group.

TBL can turn a previously more passive lecture-based class into an active student collaborative environment. A general TBL session would look like this:

(1) Individual Study: Students are expected to have prepared for the session ahead of time by reading teacher-assigned materials.

(2) Individual Test: The time in class is then open for students to assess their knowledge of the material; first on their own by taking an IRAT (individual readiness assessment test).

(3) Team Test: Groups then work as a team to answer the same IRAT question. Students deliberate and decide on a group answer to the GRAT (group readiness assessment test).

(4) Written Appeals: the class reconvenes as a large group to discuss the answers from each group; instructor provides input to direct the discussion.

(5) Application Question: students work in their groups to apply their knowledge and critical thinking skills to answer a question posed to the entire class by the instructor. The class then reconvenes and discusses their answers with the instructor's oversight.

Students can earn points for each section of the TBL sesion that count toward their course grade.

The resources below give an overview of how TBL may work to enhance your course lectures.

Watch this video of Michaelsen describing the significance of different physical set-ups of teams

This video details TBL at University of Texas at Austin and is an excellent introduction to TBL

LITERATURE [click on the titles below to browse content]

Michaelsen, L.K., Watson, W.E., Cragin, J.P., and Fink, L.D. (1982) Team-based learning: A potential solution to the problems of large classes. Exchange: The Organizational Behavior Teaching Journal 7(4): 18-33. [Click here to request article]

Michaelsen, L. K. (2008). Team-based learning for health professions education: A guide to using small groups for improving learning. Sterling, Va: Stylus.

Michaelsen, L. K., Knight, A. B., & Fink, L. D. (2002). Team-based learning: A transformative use of small groups. Westport, Conn: Praeger.

Koles, P G, Stolfi, A, Borges, N J, et al. (2010). The impact of team-based learning on medical students' academic performance. Academic medicine, 85(11), 1739-45.

Parmelee, D, & Michaelsen, L K. (2010). Team-based learning: it's here and it WORKS!. Academic medicine, 85(11), 1658-9.

Parmelee, D X, & Michaelsen, L K. (2010). Twelve tips for doing effective Team-Based Learning (TBL). Medical teacher, 32(2), 118-22.

Parmelee, D X, DeStephen, Dan, & Borges, N J. (2009). Medical students' attitudes about team-based learning in a pre-clinical curriculum. Medical education online, 14, 1-.

Click here for PUBMED RESULTS for a search on team-based learning

Team-Based Learning (Univ of British Columbia website) - http://teambasedlearning.apsc.ubc.ca/

Procedures Consult: an Online Resource to Brush Up on Clinical Skills Knowledge

2010-09-28T12:42:00.003-07:00

"See one. Do one. Teach One…Made Better and Safer”. That’s the tagline of Procedures Consult, an online resource that is now available to you thanks to the UCSF Medical Center and the Library’s joint efforts to set up a subscription to this tool. This comprehensive and concise procedural reference tool details how to prepare for, perform and follow up on the most common medical procedures.

View a quick narrated overview tutorial below

Key features include:
· Videos and illustrations for each procedure
· Self-directed procedures training and testing with trackable results
· Pre-, During, and Post-procedure reference
· Procedural checklists and Universal protocols
· Billing codes for procedures

Additional educational benefits:
· Highlights when patient "informed consent" is required
· Reinforces Joint Commission patient safety concepts
· Conforms to ACGME and ABMS (American Board of Internal Medicine) standards

Helpful ways to browse the content from the Procedures Consult homepage are to: (a) look under the Procedures by specialty listed in the left menu bar (b) type a specific procedure into the search box, or (c) select a particular region on the illustration of the human body.

Below is an example of what a procedures listing contains. Go to http://tinyurl.com/pconsult to view a short narrated video tutorial on how to navigate Procedures Consult.

CLICK ON THE IMAGE BELOW TO SEE LARGER VIEW

Options of where to access Procedures Consult:

- Listed under the Popular Resources section on the Library’s homepage
- Download the Clinician’s Toolbar to your browser for a one click link to Procedures Consult

How to access this resource on your mobile device:
- Go to m.proceduresconsult.com *
- Also check out the UCSF mobile page at m.ucsf.edu developed by the Library

Top Reasons to use Procedures Consult:

(1) Clear and concise information about how to perform major medical procedures

(2) Excellent self-review of information you need to know for critical clinical skills training

(3) Ideal teaching tool to offer residents, students, and other medical trainees that allows them to track their learning via self-paced tests

* Setting up mobile access: first go to Procedures Consult - the web resource (http://app.proceduresconsult.com/Learner/Default.aspx) - (NOTE: you must sign into VPN first, if you're accessing this off-campus). In the upper right of their page, click on the "Sign-in" link. Create your account there. That should be what you use to log into on your mobile device when you go to m.proceduresconsult.com.

Use RefGrab-It to Download your PubMed Results

2010-09-28T12:42:00.001-07:00

If you've used a citation software, like RefWorks, you know that it takes a few steps to get a citation from PubMed into your citation software. It's a multi-step process that requires saving your citations in PubMed first as a text file before importing into RefWorks or EndNote.

Click this link to see this traditional method.

BUT if you have a RefWorks account, you can actually use the RefGrab-It feature to capture citations in PubMed. This allows you to completely by-pass the traditional method of saving a text file before importing.

You can do this one citation at a time, or as I prefer, if you have several citations, send them to the Clipboard in PubMed and then use RefGrab-It to import into RefWorks.

Watch this narrated video to see how.

RefGrab-It to Cite Information from the Web

2010-08-27T13:54:00.001-07:00

So, you've found an article or book that would be perfect to cite in your research. What's a fast and easy way to capture and create a citation from that website?

Here's an idea:

The citation management software, RefWorks, has a RefGrab-It feature that allows you to import information from any website into RefWorks.

Downloading RefGrab-It bookmarklet to your browser:

(1) Go to https://refworks.com/Refworks/newuser.asp to set up a new account if do not already have one. [If off-campus, log into VPN and Network Connect first; RefWorks is free to UCSF users because the Library has a site licence.]

(2) Go to http://www.refworks.com/refworks/BookMarklet.asp to download the bookmarklet

Watch this video showing how to use the RefGrab-It tool to easily import the web citation into your RefWorks account.

Calculate free mobile app

2010-08-12T16:31:00.000-07:00

Calculate is a free app from QxMD. It is a decision support tool that has over 150 clinical calculators. It is available for the iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, and Android.

The app is an upgrade and integration of the other QxMD's apps for Cardio Calc, Neph Calc, GI Calc, Heme Calc and Pregnancy Wheel.

User feedback is very high for this app. Check it out for yourself!

Watch this non-narrated quick tour:

Google Scholar: How to Re-Sort Results by Date

2010-07-28T17:03:00.001-07:00

You may have noticed that when you run a search in Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com), the top result is NOT necessarily the most recent publication on your search topic.

As with any result of a regular Google search, the top listing is the most linked-to page on the Internet on your topic. Thus, the top result is based more on popularity on the Web rather than on accuracy or complete relevance to your original search.

It's quite straight-forward on how to re-sort your Google Scholar results. In the light-green bar above your Google Scholar search results, select the arrow next to the "anytime" box. Choose the date you'd like the results to go back to.

To make sure you have a much more thorough list of results, make sure to search a complimentary database, such as PubMed, that always ranks its results by most relevant and most recent at the top.

PubMed Quick Tip #14: Creating a Permanent Link to Search Results

2010-07-28T14:01:00.001-07:00

Let's say you want to generate a URL to get you straight to a set of PubMed results from a search you ran. Why would this be useful?

- Instead of telling someone to copy and paste a search phrase you searched in PubMed, you can provide them a direct link to the results

- You want to have a link, to say all the papers you've published that are in PubMed, available on a personal or departmental website

Here's how you can create a permanent link to your PubMed results:

(1) Run your search in PubMed

(2) On the results page, scroll down to the lower part of the right-hand margin, and select the See more... link under the Search details section

(3) Select the URL button

(4) Copy and paste the URL that appears at the top of your browser screen

EXTRA TIP:
Since the URL generated is rather long, you can shorten it, if you like, before you send it to someone, by using a tool that will generate a shorter URL (for example tinyurl.com)

MedFools for Free Scutsheets

2010-06-10T12:12:00.001-07:00

Med students and residents - help me out here:

Have any of you used MedFools before?

This not-for-profit site has been around since 2001 and is for "students by students" and "residents by residents". The site provides information ranging from sample personal statements, insider tips and book recommendations for USMLE prep, wards, residency applications, match, pre-med prep, and free downloadable materials.

Their homepage has an item mentioning that their site has been blacklisted by the AAMC. Apparently, some medical school and residency applicants may have lifted sample essays from MedFools and unwisely used them in their own application.

Steering clear of this sticky issue, I wanted to point out a feature that looks quite helpful on this site: The downloadable scutsheets and fact sheets . These free resources can come in handy when gathering patient information and reminders of what to cover during the patient encounter. They're printable and convenient to stuff into your whitecoat pocket.

Subjects include scutsheets and fact sheets for:
- Medicine - General Wards - Pediatrics - OB/GYN - Psychiatry - USMLE (bacteria, fungus, and parasites charts)

Examples of some of these resources:
- H&P form for clerkships - http://www.medfools.com/downloads/megs-history-physical.pdf
- Peds Notes - http://www.medfools.com/downloads/pediatric_notes.pdf
- USMLE Parasites study chart - http://www.medfools.com/downloads/parasite.pdf

Give the site a once over and let me know what you think of this resource.

Medical Radio: free iTunes app

2010-06-02T16:04:00.001-07:00

Take a break from listening to the top 25 songs on your iPod. Here's a free app from the iTunes Store that can satisfy your thirst for knowledge while you're at the gym or while commuting.

Medical Radio is a free app from ReachMD. These weekly 15 minute broadcasts, for physicians by physicians, are from the Sirius-XM satellite radio channel XM160.

- Over 5000 searchable podcasts

- Covers medical information, conversation, and education (CME & CE) about general to specialty medicine topics

- Take a CME or CE course exam directly on your mobile device

- Includes FDA and CDC updates

- Compatable with iPhone, iPod Touch, & iPad

Give this app a try and let me know what you think of it. Happy listening and learning!

Google Quick Tip #28

2010-05-31T22:56:00.001-07:00

Have you noticed that there are two links in the left menu of a Google search results page?

Hats off to you if your curiosity has gotten the better of you, and you've clicked on those links to see what's hiding under there. Or if you've ignored those links, as I did for a few weeks, you'll be happily surprised by what's hiding under those sidebar links.

GOOGLE QUICK TIP #28

By clicking on either the More or Show search tools dropdown arrows in the left menu of a Google results page, you can further narrow the results to quickly find a more relevant set.

Watch this short non-narrated tutorial to see these links in action

Clicking on the More arrow lets you filter results by format type, such as:
- Images -Videos -Maps -Blogs -Books & -Discussions

TIP:
Clicking on the Discussions category displays online conservations going on out there in the Internet on whatever your search topic is. This can be a great tool for getting a pulse of what different opinions are out there on your topic.

Clicking on the Show search tools arrow further limits or rearranges your results. Some features of note that are particularly helpful are:

- results from the past month, past day, past hour, etc.
- can rearrange results by date rather than the default order by relevance
- Related searches can pull together results that were not part of your original search
- Wonder wheel is a cool visual tool that dynamically changes the results based on topics you select from a central image representing the results on the right

Thank goodness for Google constantly trying to improve their user experience. Hopefully these new features will help you quickly unearth more useful information from amongst the usual pages and pages of results you get when you search Google.

PubMed Quick Tip #13: Creating Results Filters

2010-05-27T10:02:00.001-07:00

If you've ever been overwhelmed by the loads and loads of results you may get from a PubMed search, there's a trick to make it a pain-free experience to review your search results.

Creating Filters will allow you to very quickly skim through your search results to look for some highly relevent papers.

Watch this non-narrated quick video below to see how to set up filters for higher levels of evidence literature

Here's how:

(1) Sign into your MyNCBI account. (If you don't have one, register for one for free at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/myncbi/register)

(2) Click on the MyNCBI link at the top right of PubMed

(3) Select the Search Filters link in the left menu bar

(4) Select the PubMed listing under the Choose a database section at the bottom of the page

(5) Click on the Search for Filters tab

(6) Search each one of these following terms and check the corresponding box in front of each listing (meta-analysis, systematic reviews, randomized controlled trial, clinical trial, review)

To see the filters in action, run a search in PubMed (after signing into your MyNCBI account) and in the right menu of the results page will be the filters that you set up, allowing you to easily jump to just those types of papers in the results.

EXTRA TIP

You can add up to 15 filters. There are interesting options to explore if you go back to searching filters (see steps 5 & 6 above). For example, you can search on Qualitative to add filters for qualitative research.

Google Quick Tip #27

2010-04-29T19:23:00.000-07:00

My aunt used to complain that while away on business trips, her husband would forever be calling her at odd hours of the night mistakenly thinking that it was a decent time to be receiving a call in the United States.

Well, now Google makes it so that my uncle no longer has to get in trouble for waking up my aunt with his middle of the night phone calls.

GOOGLE QUICK TIP #27

To find out the time in a specific city, simply type in the word time followed by the name of the location.

If you want to know the current time in different time zones in the United States, just type the words time now

PubMed Quick Tip #13: Highlighting Your Search Terms

2010-03-25T12:36:00.001-07:00

Who wouldn't appreciate having their search terms highlighted as you browse your PubMed results?

I find it very helpful to use the highlight feature. For example, the title of a paper may sound quite promising, but if you use the highlighting feature to look for where those words appear in the PubMed abstract, you might find that there are very few, if any, of your search terms in the abstract. This indicates that the paper may not be worth reading.

Here's how to activate the highlighting feature:

(1) Sign into your MyNCBI account at the top right of PubMed (if you don't have an account, you can set one up at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/myncbi/register/)

(2) Click on the Preferences link in the left menu

(3) Select the Highlighting link to choose a color

(4) Select the green Save button to remember your preference

TIP:

Keep yourself signed in to MyNCBI with the "Keep Me Signed In" checkbox that appears when you first sign in to MyNCBI. This way your highlighting feature will always be on.

iRadiology App

2010-03-25T08:50:00.001-07:00

The iRadiology App is available for free to download at the iTunes Apps store.

This app allows you to browse amongst 500+ radiology cases to improve skills to interpret plain film, CT, and MRI readings.

The cases are based upon materials from Dr. Gillian Lieberman, the Director of Harvard Medical Student training and Associate Director of the Residency Program at Beth Israel Medical Center.

You can increase the zoom capability on your iPhone to better view the images:

Go to "Settings", tap "General", then "Accessibility"
Tap "Zoom", and slide the Zoom feature to the "On" position

Tapping on the "Findings" link related to an image will bring up more information pertaining to the featured clinical case. One medical student reviewer on the web commented that he found this to be high yield information in studying for the USMLE 1 Steps 1 & 2 exams.

Check it out!

Use Jing to Create Quick Online Tutorials

2010-02-24T14:18:00.001-08:00

For the past two years or so, I've been using Jing to produce quick online tutorials (aka "screencasts") that capture what I am doing on my computer screen. Jing, which is free, is a product of TechSmith, the company that produces Camtasia, which is not free.

Jing is great if you need to make quick online tutorials. Noteworthy features of Jing are:

* Record your voice narrating the tutorial

* Create a JPEG image of any part of your screen that can be labeled, annotated, and highlighted

* Immediately generates a URL to your tutorial that you can share with others or post to a website, even to Twitter and Facebook

* Both PC and Mac compatable

For $14.95/yr, you might consider purchasing JingPro. This allows you to save your tutorials as movie files that can be easily uploaded to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook or to your own web server.

One big thing to keep in mind about Jing is that you CANNOT edit your recordings. You'd have to buy software such as TechSmith's Camtasia or Adobe Captivate to be able to edit your recordings. These programs I'd suggest you use if you're looking to make lengthier and more interactive tutorials.

But for its amazing ease of use, I'm all about using Jing!

Watch what Jing has to say about itself:

Also check out their blog for more tips

As a huge advocate of efficiency and accessibility to creating online learning materials, I encourage you to go forth and Jing!

Genes to Cognition Online

2010-02-16T22:14:00.001-08:00

The Genes to Cognition Online (G2C) website is an amazingly dynamic and interactive way to use multimedia to teach neuroscience. The resource is a project of the Dolan DNA Learning Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.

G2C looks across and analyzes six levels of thinking and thinking disorders and research approaches:

*Genes *Biochemicals *Cells *Brains *Cognition (Behavior) *Environment

Its interface appeals to both the visual and textual learner. The dynamic map of networks connect topics and allows the user to interactively explore the content, which includes videos. The site's creators state:

"We hope visitors will integrate information from the levels to gain a broad understanding of topic areas. Ultimately, this networking process mimics the nature of science: amalgamating information from different domains to form a complete picture of the world."

The upper right portion on the homepage has a link to Teacher Feature that provides teacher's guides, student worksheets, and suggested test questions.

Also in the upper right region of the homepage is a link to a Protein-Protein Interaction Database. You can find brief descriptions of proteins and get links to more detailed information from resources such as OMIM and Entrez Gene.

This is the same group that developed the 3D Brain App that's available for free to download from iTunes Apps Store.

Watch their introductory video on how to use this resource.

Making Your Bookmarks Delicious

2010-01-31T08:11:00.001-08:00

Can't remember the name of that cool website your colleague emailed you about praciticing auscultation techniques? How about that website your mom told you about how to baste a turkey? Delicious is a way to keep your bookmarks in one place, no matter what computer you're using.

If you're already using Delicious, kudos to you. If not, once you've read this post, you'll be making all your bookmarked websites incredibly Delicious.

Delicious is a social bookmarking site founded in 2003 by Joshua Schachter and acquired by Yahoo in 2005. According to Wikipedia, by the end of 2008, there were over 5.3 million users and over 180 million unique URLs bookmarked on Delicious.

What is social bookmarking? Social bookmarking allows you to untether yourself from your own computer and be able to access your bookmarks wherever you may be at any computer.

You "tag" your bookmarks to describe a website and those tags are shared with others. Exploring similar tags creates a social network of people interested in similar topics.

Here is a quick way to understand social bookmarking:

Great uses for Delicious:

* Storing and tagging websites that you find interesting

* Create subject specific Delicious bookmarks to share with your colleagues and friends; can also have several people add to the same Delicious account. For example, see what the New York Academy of Medicine Library has in their Delicious account.

* Explore what other people have tagged in their Delicious accounts to help you discover sites you were unaware of but would be highly relevant to your interests

The presenation below gives a quick introduction of what Delicious can do for you.

Social Bookmarking; Delicious. How & Why

View more presentations from David Hopkins.

Read what Delicious has to say about themselves - http://delicious.com/help/learn

Click on the Tools link at the very bottom of a Delicious page to get all the info you need to know how to easily integrate Delcious into your web browser - http://delicious.com/help/tools

Medical Education, Baby, and Me

2010-01-29T09:18:00.001-08:00

My son was born at the UCSF Children's Hospital in early January, three weeks before his expected due date, and just one day shy of being considered full-term. Being in a high-risk pregnancy category, I knew that I wanted to have the most experienced members of the medical team at the delivery.

Santiago already contemplating life at the tender age of two weeks

I anticipated that I would probably know several of the interns and students that would be rounding while I was a patient, since I teach many literature searching workshops for the UCSF School of Medicine. My conundrum was whether or not I would feel comfortable having medical students and interns I knew professionally taking care of me in a very private and personal realm. It was tough to decide to want to keep my professional and personal life separate.

When I was admitted, I made a request to the senior attending to have only the attending or R3 (third-year resident) be the one to deliver my baby. In the end, I am very fortunate that the entire labor and delivery teams that oversaw my 32 hours of labor provided incredible expertise and support.

The delivery team consisted of the senior attending, R3, R1 (intern), medical student, labor nurse, and anesthesiologist. I was impressed by the incredible level of patience, knowledge, skill, professionalism, and caring that each member contributed to the team. This mixture of strengths ultimately reinforced my realization that when it came time to actually deliver the baby, it was more important to me to have a strong team with me, regardless of whether or not I knew any of them professionally.

In a way, I learned my lesson to practice what I preach. I have helped several faculty, clinicians and students over the years with finding resources to support the educational model of interdisciplinary education and communication skills within team dynamics. It took having to actually go through a personal experience to truly appreciate the power of this aspect of medical education. I have huge respect for the triumphs of medical education. And so very grateful to have a healthy and happy baby.

Google Quick Tip #26

2009-12-15T16:56:00.001-08:00

Since we're all lined up at the office/classroom door ready to charge out to get a head start on our holiday vacation, I'll make this tip short and sweet.

GOOGLE QUICK TIP #26

Those special occasion Google logos always put a smile on our faces. Care to go down memory lane of past logos?

Go to http://www.google.com/logos to see the full archive.

Here's wishing you all a clean ending to 2009 and get ready to ring in a new decade! Be merry, be safe, be thankful, and be well!

PubMed Quick Tip #12: Running an Author Search

2009-12-08T17:33:00.001-08:00

The new PubMed interface makes it easier to directly search for an author's publications.

(1) Under the Advanced Search link to the right above the search box, scroll down to the "Search by Author, Journal, Publications Date, and more" section

(2) On the first line that defaults to the "Author" search, begin to type in the author's last name

(3) Choose amongst the auto-suggest list that appears as you type

(4) Click on the "Search" button

NOTE:

To ensure that you retrieve the author's most recent and all publications prior to 2002, select the listing with the Last Name First Initials format (rather than the one listing the Last Name Full Name spelled out - that one only retrieves publications after 2002)

For other alternative ways to search for an author, watch this narrated PubMed tutorial.

The Six Second ECG Simulator

2009-12-07T11:37:00.001-08:00

Who doesn't love a game to ease the bitter pill of learning how to read ECGs? The Six Second ECG Dynamic Cardiac Rhythm Simulator was created by SkillStat Learning, Inc.

This learning tool provides a way to "Explore. Review. Play" as their site describes. Contents cover:

- Twenty-two of the most common cardiac rhythms (lead ii)

- Watch, listen and read dynamic rhythms that you can freeze and resume

The best way to explore this site:

(1) Click on any of the name of any rhythm

(2) Click on the yellow "Start" button on the top right to listen to that rhythm and see it dynamicly scroll across the screen. Information appears at the bottom blue section describing the rhythm.

(3) Use the aqua "Freeze" button to stop the scrolling. Press the "Start" button to resume sound and scrolling.

(4) The red "Game" button tests your knowledge.

(5) The green "Settings" button lets you set the time allotted per question and the audio and motion options.

(6) Clicking on the orange "Learn" button is equivalent to the Home button to return you to the silent homepage of the site.

Thank you to Clinton Pong, a reader of this blog, and student at the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, for recommending this ECG learning game.

Google Quick Tip #25

2009-11-26T13:11:00.001-08:00

Flu season isn't over yet. Have you gotten your seasonal and H1N1 flu vaccine shots?

Here's an alternative to hitting the speed dial on your phone to your local health clinic or pharmacy to find out.

GOOGLE QUICK TIP #25

Google has created a Flu Shot Finder mash-up search in Google Maps to help you find the closest locations to get your flu shots.

http://www.google.com/flushot

Searching by zip code, city, or address are good ways to find the different options. You'll be linked to directions and websites with more information.

So, if you haven't gotten your flu vaccinations yet, there's no better time than the present. Here's to your health!

PubMed Quick Tip #11: Exporting Citations to Bibliographic Software

2009-11-25T22:26:00.001-08:00

With the new PubMed interface, there are a few things to note for how to export citations into bibliographic software such as RefWorks or EndNote.

The basic steps are generally the same as with the old PubMed interface. Here's a quick run down of what to do.

(1) Select the box(es) of the citations you want to export

(2) Under the "Send to:" dropdown menu, on the upper right of the results list, select "File"

(3) Under the "Format" dropdown menu, choose "MEDLINE"

(4) Select "Create File"

(5) Save the file to your Desktop

(6) Import the file into your bibliographic software (ie, RefWork or EndNote)

View PubMed's narrated tutorial showing you how to do this.

3D Brain App

2009-11-24T23:50:00.000-08:00

Whether you're a novice or an advanced learner studying the brain, I think you'll find the 3D Brain a worthy free app to download to your iPhone or iPod Touch.

(1) Select the "Structures" icon to view different regions of the brain

(2) Select the "L" Labels option to view the labelled version of the brain region

(3) Selecting the "T" Info provides an overview, case study, associated functions, cognitive disorders, damage, substructures. The Research Reviews at the very bottom of the Info page lists research articles that link to PubMed.

Download this app for free from the iTunes apps store.

Swiping your finger to the right/left or up/down on a brain image allows you to rotate the view. Pretty cool stuff!

Your brain will thank you for downloading this handy app.

Google Tip #24

2009-10-30T15:11:00.001-07:00

Every now and again, you may want to find a video describing some topic in which you're interested. You could do a quick search on Google Video or YouTube.

For example, if I search in Google Video for the phrase h1n1 cdc, I get 3,990 results. That's too many for me to want to comb through.

Searching YouTube with the same phrase, I get 2,890 results. Still too many to sift through.

GOOGLE QUICK TIP #24

Here's how to get around the results overload when you're looking for a video on a certain topic.

In a regular Google search, you can type in some specific commands to look for different video formats.

Here's what the search phrase pictured above is looking for:

+inurl:

whatever follows behind the colon has to be in the URL of the webpage; this is indicated by the + sign

wmv OR avi OR mpg

these are examples of movie filetypes; connecting them with OR will look for any of these filetypes that must occur in the URL of the webpage

site:cdc.gov

this will look for our search exclusively in just the CDC's website

h1n1

this will look for the topic of h1n1 anywhere on the webpage

When I run this search in Google, I get 101 results. A very manageable set to browse through to find some good videos on the topic.

Free Mind Mapping Tools

2009-10-28T14:39:00.001-07:00

Oh boy - I've found some scrumptious free mindmapping tools that I need to share with you!

Mind mapping is a way to visualize concepts by drawing out associations between your ideas. It can be extremely useful as a brainstorming tool and even for teaching. It combines the textual and visual cognitive senses we use to help us understand concepts.

Two absolutely free and absolutely easy to use mind mapping tools are:

(1) bubbl.us - you don't need to set up an account. Simply click on the "Start Brainstorming"button.

The controls are intuitive. For example, hovering over the first box allows you to type in text. You can hover over parts of that box to show crosshairs that allow you to reposition the box wherever you want. The other hovering options allow you to add boxes stemming from the original. You can change the color of the boxes.

When you're done mapping, click on the Menu button at the bottom right of the screen. You can export the map you've created as an image, XML, or HTML file. Below is an example of a mind map I created using bubbl.us:

(2) SimpleMind Xpress - this is a free app for your iPhone or iPod Touch. There is a paid version, but I find the free one does a good job. You can upload your final mind map to your iTunes and then download it to your computer as a document.

This presentation below gives some helpful pointers on how to maximize the effectiveness of your mind mapping exercises.

Mind Mapping

View more presentations from Amir Saif .

These tools produce such graphically appealing mind maps that you'll feel compelled to map out just about anything. Knock yourself out!

Navigating PubMed's New Interface

2009-10-27T17:57:00.001-07:00

PubMed has gotten a facelift as of Oct. 27, 2009. With this sudden jolt, it may initially feel as if someone's gone into your house and re-arranged all your furniture and left you to figure out where everything now is.

Not to worry. Here are a few basic pointers to get you oriented:

The key items in the left blue menu bar of the old PubMed are now below the big image on PubMed's homepage.

Helpful key features in that section are:

(a) Single Citation Matcher - enter information to get directly to the article's abstract

(b) Clinical Queries - quickly find clinically relevant articles

(d) Journals Database - find journals on specific topics and detailed information about the journals

The Limits, History, and Clipboard tabs that were on the old PubMed no longer exist as tabs. They are now found under the Advanced Search link to the right of the search box.

For example, when you run a search and get to the results, click on the Advanced Search link to see:

(a) Search History - archives your searches for the next eight hours

(b) Search option boxes you can fill out to refine or run another search

When viewing an abstract:

(a) Select the Display Settings link on the left above the abstract to view other formats of the abstract

(b) To send items to the Clipboard, check the box of the articles you want, and select the Send to link to the right above the results and select the Clipboard option

View this short non-narrated tutorial that demonstrates the features described above.

The National Library of Medicine has made tutorials that show you through more detailed examples of how to use the new PubMed interface. These are located on PubMed's homepage, in the white space below, listed as PubMed Tutorials under the Using PubMed section.

Feel free to comment to this posting if you feel strongly one way or another about the new PubMed interface changes.

Download the Clinician's Toolbar to Your Browser

2009-10-27T15:03:00.001-07:00

Kudos to you if you've already downloaded the UCSF Library's Clinician's Toolbar to your desktop browser. If you've used our toolbars in the past, you may not know that there is a new and improved version of our toolbars.

Apologies for this mouse-sized image of the Clinician's Toolbar, but I wanted to point out what the advantages are of downloading this toolbar to your browser.

(1) Get quick access to the Library by clicking on the blue UCSF Library logo on the far left of the toolbar

(2) Go straight to frequently used resources, such as UpToDate

(3) Gain additional one-click access to our online journals, find articles, or get to Drug Info and Clinical Resources on the Library's web

If you click on the dropdown arrow on the left inside the toolbar's search box, you can choose to search PubMed and Google Scholar and even Google Images as some key resources available.

If you've got the old version of the Library's toolbar on your browser, uninstall that before installing the new version.

To download and find out more about the Clinician's Toolbar, go to http://www.library.ucsf.edu/services/browsertools and scroll down the page to see more info.

Google Quick Tip #23

2009-09-29T09:57:00.001-07:00

Behold - there's a way to sort through the data dump you get when

you run a Google Images search!

GOOGLE QUICK TIP #23

The next time you run a Google Images search, click the Show Options link on the left above your list of results.

A list of options will appear in the left menu. You can filter the image results to your own specifications, such as size, color, and image type.

Click on the Reset options link at the bottom of the left menu if you want to return to your original set of image search results. And last but not least, remember to always site your image sources!

View this quick narrated tutorial to see this feature in action.

EdHeads Virtual Surgery Games

2009-09-28T16:43:00.001-07:00

If you're not a real surgeon, but you want to play one (on the web), EdHeads.org has created a site that's just for you.

The EdHeads team creates educational interactive web modules. There are currently nine activities to choose from. The medically related ones are surgical deep brain stimulation, hip replacement, hip resurfacing, and knee surgery.

Once you've entered one of the surgical activities, you'll be taken from the Reception Desk into the hallway of the OR. A virtual surgeon will orient you to your patient and have questions for you to interact with and answer throughout the tutorial. You will be asked to select different surgical instruments and use them during the surgery.

The tutorial is narrated, but you can also select the Subtitles icon to see closed captioning. If you want to skip ahead to different parts of the tutorial, select the Activity Site Map icon.

If you have the stomach to view actual photos of the surgeries being described, click on the Surgery Photos icon.

Included with each activity is a Teacher's Guide to give you ideas of how to make the activities a useful learning tool for your students. There are sample quiz questions and answers, a glossary, and additional helpful resources on the topic.

If you're in the mood for something non-medical, check out the others, such as Designing a Cell Phone or learning how to predict and report the Weather.

Be inspired to have fun!

Cultivating Creativity in the Classroom

2009-09-22T15:12:00.001-07:00

As a student, you know that rote memorization is no way to learn something well if you want to remember it in the long run.

As a teacher, you know that overloading your students with facts during an hour-long lecture without giving them a chance to engage in discussion is no way for you to get your message across to them effectively.

As more and more medical students opt to not attend lecture and instead watch or listen to recorded lectures at their own pace, what is an instructor to do?

There are many debates going on in the world of higher education trying to creatively answer this question. There has been no magic solution to this recent conundrum. Educators are forced to be more creative.

Therein lies the answer - instructors must cultivate creativity in the classroom. The following presentation, Cultivating Creativity in the Classroom, was put together by Jamie Tubbs, a 5th grade teacher in Ohio.

As educators, I hope that we can find inspiration in how to engage learners at any age. Tubbs' ideas are well presented in this quick slideset. May it give you pause and food for thought as you think up ways to re-engage with your students and the content you are teaching.

Cultivating Creativity in the Classroom

View more presentations from Jamie Tubbs.

Academic Search Complete database

2009-09-21T11:40:00.001-07:00

Let's say you've run a search in PubMed. You've found some key articles relating to your research, but you're left wondering what else is out there on your topic.

You may have not thought of this before, but non-medical publications could provide you with a different scope on your topic. For example, you might want to find what's been published in key newspapers, such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times or industry magazines.

That's where Academic Search Complete database can come in handy. It searches:

Multidisciplinary topics
Scholarly peer-reviewed journals, popular magazines, newspapers, books, book chapters, book reviews, government documents, conference proceedings, and reports
Full text articles, books, and reports
Coverage from 1887 to the present

View this narrated tutorial to see how you can find information in trade publications to enhance your research.

Google Quick Tip #22

2009-08-31T11:27:00.001-07:00

Ever wish that Google could do more than just give you a data dump of results? Well, prepare to be dazzled by Google Squared.

GOOGLE QUICK TIP #22

The folks down at Google are bubbling with ideas, many of which they post in the Google Labs section of their site. Google Squared is one of the coolest things to pop out of the labs lately.

Google Squared is at http://www.google.com/squared . When you type in a topic, Google will generate a table of information populated with results from various sources on the web.

This tool can be a handy way to get more details on a broad topic. Columns are usually populated with images and then additional columns of data that they believe would be of interest.

You can modify the initial set of results:

(1) There is the option to add more results
(2) Click inside an Add items or Add columns box and either select from their suggestions or type in your own addition
(3) Delete any unwanted column or row by clicking on the corresponding "X" for that item

Results can be exported as an Excel file. You can also save your table if you have a free Google/Gmail account.

Explore their list of "squared" topics below the Google Squared search box.

View this short non-narrated video tutorial to see how I generated a list of antibiotics and a list of Renaissance artists.

Keep in mind that the information generated in these tables may not be 100% accurate. Take this more as a quick tool that you would definitely not depend on as your main source of data, especially with topics dealing with health and science. Using reliable database resources for those topics is the safest bet for reliable information.

But in the meantime, knock yourself out with Google Squared!

Medical Games for your iPhone/iPod Touch

2009-08-31T09:45:00.001-07:00

I finally caved in last month and got an iPod Touch. (Actually, it was part of a package deal with a MacBook laptop at the campus bookstore.) Wow! I must confess - the little device is power packed with goodies. There are a mind-boggling amount of apps for just about everything.

I stumbled upon two medically related games that can help you have fun while you study. Both are free from the iTunes apps store.

Diagnose the Disease

This game is from the makers of the Epocrates drug resource. You can race the clock to test your knowledge based on the images provided. You can compete with top clinicians and submit your scores. This game is also available to play on Facebook.

Speed Bones Lite

This game tests how well you know your bones. Race the clock and earn points when you answer the questions about skeletal anatomy. Using the Practice Mode lets you learn specific regions. Review Mode replays your mistakes so that you can learn from them.

Since I neither know my diseases nor bones in great detail, let me know if you try out these games and tell me what you think. I believe that having fun will facilitate learning when put to good use. Let's hope these games prove true.

Test Your Medical Knowledge Using Case Files in AccessMedicine

2009-08-27T12:34:00.001-07:00

Looking to understand how to put all your medical knowledge into the bigger scheme of things? Tired of reading and memorizing facts and ready to put them to the test?

The AccessMedicine database is a good source to find Case Files to test your knowledge on real life clinical cases.

(1) Select either the Case Files tab or the Case Files for Students link (see image below)
(2) View the cases by Organ Systems or by Specialty
(3) After reading the details of the case, proceed to the Questions tab; select the View Answers link on the bottom of the page to see if you were correct
(4) The other topics covered with the case are Clinical Correlation, Comprehension Questions to further test your knowledge, clinical Pearls, and References to find out more information

The cases are from the LANGE Case Files series edited by Dr. Eugene C. Toy.

There is also a link to listen to free audio cases.

This Clinical Cases feature in AccessMedicine is ideal for teachers and students alike:

TEACHERS - browse the cases to get an idea of how to write your own case files for students

STUDENTS - apply and assess your knowledge of material you've covered; use these cases as a group discussion project to help you understand concepts.

View this brief non-narrated tutorial to see the Case Files feature in AccessMedicine.

Epocrates and Lexi-Comp Drug apps for mobile devices

2009-08-24T10:08:00.001-07:00

For those of you techy mobile users out there in the health care field, it may not be a mystery that Epocrates is a very popular free app available. For those of you not yet in the know, here's what's to know.

The free version includes:

- Over 3300 drug monographs, updated weekly - Adult and pediatric dosing - Pill ID - Drug interactions - Tables/Calculators - Formulary information

Epocrates is downloadable on the iPhone/iPod Touch, Blackberry, Palm, Win Mobile, and Win Smarthone.

Lexi-Comp Individual Application is also a free mobile app for drug information. It is compatable with iPhone/iPod Touch, Palm OS, Pocket PC, and Blackberry.

If you are on the UCSF network, you can access the complete Lexi-Comp database for UCSF, SFGH, Laguna Honda and Medi-Cal formulary information, as well as site-specific drug therapy guidelines.

Let me know if there are any other mobile drug apps that you would recommend. In the meantime, these two should cover quite a bit of ground.

Google Quick Tip #21

2009-07-30T11:20:00.001-07:00

Eh... did you notice that Google has slipped in a tiny link that sits just above the left side of the results of your search?

GOOGLE QUICK TIP #21

After weeks of ignoring the link that looks like this: , I finally got around to clicking on the "+ Show options" link to see what was hiding under there.

Well, what to my wondering eyes did appear was a stroke of genius that I've been waiting for from Google for ages! There is a list of options to limit your results. It's fantastic! When you click on the Wonderwheel category, you get a fun way to visually search your results via a concept map that re-sorts itself when you click on a topic.

Ooh - exciting! Have a ball exploring these new hidden features!

Clinical Cases and Images blog

2009-07-30T08:08:00.001-07:00

The Clinical Cases and Images blog is a "free case-based curriculum of clinical medicine." I stumbled upon this resource three years ago and have recommended it as a reference to students for finding clinical images that are accompanied by helpful discussions.

The blog was created in 2005 and is a joint effort of physicians at the Cleveland Clinic and the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine. It is well organized by specialties along the top menu bar.

The topics covered include:

Allergy & Immunology -- Cardiology -- Pulmonology -- Gastroenterology -- Nephrology -- Endocrinology -- Hematology & Oncology -- Rheumatology -- Infectious Diseases -- Neuorology -- Geriatrics -- Pain Management

Other categories offered provide more information and links in the right menu bar:

-- Physical Examination Videos
-- Procedure Guides Step-by-Step
-- Electrocardiograms, X-rays, CT scans
-- Clinical Images from NEJM
-- Clinical Cases in Test Format (test your knowledge based on details of a case)

In the lower part of the right menu bar is a link to many of the images found in the blog that are housed on the photo hosting site Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/clinicalcases/.

The comments made on the content are helpful discussions. An encouraging feature to note is that all entries have a "Published" and "Last Updated" dates that you'll find by scrolling down the page. This can help you evaluate the usefulness and timeliness of the content.

To get a sampling of what you can learn from this well done blog, take a look at EKGs with Dr. Koch: It's Not Only Educational It's Also Fun!

Diagnosaurus app for your handheld device

2009-07-29T23:07:00.001-07:00

If you've used the Diagnosaurus tool for (DDx) differential diagnosis in the AccessMedicine database, you'll know how handy it can be. Now, it can actually be "handy" literally in the palm of your hand.

Diagnosaurus allows you to browse by symptom, disease, organ system, or view all of the 1000+ differential diagnoses. There are versions of this tool for the iPhone/iPod Touch, as well as PDA's.

iPhone app is $0.99 from the App Store on iTunes. The PDA version is a free download.

If you'd like more advice on finding medical apps for mobile devices, please visit this site.

Google Quick Tip #20

2009-06-29T17:48:00.001-07:00

You've found a webpage that looks intriguing, but the text is in a foreign language. What do you do?

GOOGLE QUICK TIP #20

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

(2) Scroll down the Language Tools page to the Translate a web page section. Copy & paste in the URL of the web page you want to translate.

(3) Select the corresponding languages you want to translate from and to (ie, French to English).

(4) Select the Translate button, and voilà, the page will be hopefully comprehensible. Google's translator tool does its best to give you something that can convey the content in a language that you can understand.

If not accurate, the results can sometimes be quite amusing.

DoctorCalc's Recommended Medical Apps for the iPhone

2009-06-29T15:31:00.001-07:00

I recently found myself having dinner with a table full of medical residents and half of them owned iPhones. This came to light when it was time to calculate the tip for the dinner bill. The iPhone owners were scrolling to the Tip Calculator app on their phone.

Once the tip was squared away, I asked if they had any medical applications on their iPhone. There are a few that seem pretty nifty. So I looked to see if there are any listings of other medical apps for the iPhone and iTouch.

I found DoctorCalc.com - a site that provides nine different medical apps for the iPhone/iTouch. They look all to be free of charge.

The nine specific applications cover:

Medical Calculator, Normal Lab Values, Rapid Sequence Intubation, Vaccines, Sedation, Jaundice, Lab Unit Converter, Patient Tracker, and Swine Flu Tracker.

I know that there are plenty more medical apps out there for the iPhone. Some free and some for a purchase fee. I have not jumped on the iPhone bandwagon yet, so if you do have an iPhone and are curious to test out any of these apps, please leave a comment as to what you think of these. And feel free to provide your own recommended medical apps.

Perhaps someone out there can convince me that I need to become an iPhone convert. Until then, I'll be sitting on the front porch with my laptop and blog waiting to hear from you all!

Highlight webpages with The Awesome Highlighter

2009-06-29T13:20:00.001-07:00

Sometimes you may want to send someone a link to a webpage. Instead of typing what's interesting about the content of that page in the body of your email, imagine that you could actually highlight the text or section of the webpage and annotate it. Well, there IS such a tool out there that allows you to do this.

The Awesome Highlighter is just as its name implies - awesome. In a few simple steps, you can generate a URL that will take people to your highlighted webpage.

(1) Copy and paste in the URL of the webpage you want to highlight

(2) The page will appear inside an editing window. Use the yellow highlighter that appears in place of the cursor to select parts of the webpage you want to highlight.

(3) Click on the + add a note link at the upper right to place sticky notes that describe why you've highlighted that region. The notes can be moved around by holding them down and dragging them to another location on the page if you wish.

(4) Select the Done button at the top to complete the process.

(5) A URL will be generated that you can copy and paste or email. This URL will allow the viewer to get straight to the highlighted and annotated webpage.

For example, I highlighted a page from the Association of American Medical Colleges' Outcomes Project webpage that covers the residency competencies. Check it out at http://awurl.com/LsbVWSv6i

Now go out there and dazzle your friends and colleagues by what you can create with The Awesome Highlighter!

DermAtlas

2009-06-29T10:52:00.001-07:00

Dermatology image resources may prove hard to find in the vast web of online information. Here's one that I came across recently that looks very well organized and informative.

DermAtlas is a Dermatology Image Atlas created by Dr. B.A. Cohen and Dr. C.U. Lehmann of Johns Hopkins University. The site boasts over 11,000 dermatology images from 513 physicians and other health professionals from 75 nations.

The basic Quick Search box is a good place to start if you know exactly what you're looking for. I recommend trying out some of the features in the left menu.

- Adv.Search : can limit your search by several criteria, such as body site, pigmentation, age, gender, and histology.

- New Images : lists images submitted in the last few months

- Differential : this search tool claims to help you figure out what type of rash you see. It is still under construction, so they provide a caveat that you search at your own caution. You can limit by morphology, color, pattern, organization, and location.

The best way to find out about an image is to click on the image itself to get detailed information. Some of the detailed information is hyperlinked and takes you to other images related to that topic.

Very helpful resource links are located at the bottom in the Other Resources portion. There you'll find links to more information about the condition in PubMed, MedlinePlus, eMedicine, Archives of Dermatology, Dermatology Online, and OMIM (the genetics database component related to PubMed).

There is an option to translate the image description near the very bottom of the page. Languages include German, Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese.

At the very bottom of the page are related images that you can click on and learn more. In the left menu, you'll also find links to quizzes and CME credits for continuing education.

I'm no expert on dermatology, so if you check out this resource, let me know how it ranks in your opinion. Feel free to leave a comment on your own recommendations!

Google Quick Tip #19

2009-05-31T16:28:00.001-07:00

Summer is upon us, and you may be flying somewhere soon or making a trip to the airport to pick-up or drop-off someone.

GOOGLE QUICK TIP #19

Google helps you check flight arrival and departure times.

Simply type in the airlines and the flight number and see if the information appears.

Happy travels!

Personal Learning Environments: the new era of education

2009-05-29T18:38:00.001-07:00

Technology has taken learning to an entirely new level in the 21st century. No longer do students learn by just receiving information from instructors in the classroom or lecture environment. Tools such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, text messaging, and smart mobile devices fold in multiple layers of alternative delivery of knowledge and communication.

Students no longer just write papers or take tests to show what they've learned. They create websites, blogs, and videos to capture and showcase their learning. I, for one, am very excited to see this wave of creativity surge in education. These new tools empower learners to develop a hybrid approach to exploring and defining their own learning styles.

What I've just described is the personal learning environment (PLE).

Watch & listen to this presentation by Graham Attwell, an "educational technologist, researcher and blogger based in Pontypridd in Wales and Bremen in Germany. "

Personal Learning Environments: The future of education?

View more PDF documents from GrahamAttwell.

PubMed Quick Tip #10

2009-05-29T17:07:00.000-07:00

Did you know that PubMed can help you quickly find the commercial and generic names of a drug, as well as its drug classification? Well, it can!

(1) Connect to the MeSH Database in the blue left margin of PubMed

(2) Type in the name of a drug (ie, Tylenol)

(3) The MeSH database result for your search should bring up the drug information (ie, Acetaminophen is the listed result when I typed in Tylenol)

(4) Scroll further down the page, and below the Entry Terms section are the synonyms for the drug.

(5) Scroll to the very bottom of the record to see the drug classification that the substance falls under (ie, Acetanilides)

(6) If you click on that drug classification, you will get a listing of other drugs in that same family
For example:

So the next time you're near a computer and need quick access to general drug definition and classification, remember to look it up in the MeSH Database!

Yale Image Finder

2009-05-29T15:40:00.001-07:00

Gosh - I love technology! Think of an idea, and most likely someone's come up with an answer. Or at least a pretty awesome prototype.

YALE IMAGE FINDER is a search tool that allows you to look for images and figures from free full-text articles in the PubMed Central database of Open Access articles.

This tool debuted in July 2008 as a project of the Krauthammer Lab of the Yale Pathology Informatics Department that specializes in text mining and translational informatics.

View this short narrated tutorial on how to search Yale Image Finder:

The Krauthammer Lab published a paper that describes their search algorithm:

Krauthammer, M, McCusker, J, & Xu, S. (2008). Yale Image Finder (YIF): a new search engine for retrieving biomedical images. Bioinformatics, 24(17), 1968-70.

ABSTRACT: Yale Image Finder (YIF) is a publicly accessible search engine featuring a new way of retrieving biomedical images and associated papers based on the text carried inside the images. Image queries can also be issued against the image caption, as well as words in the associated paper abstract and title. A typical search scenario using YIF is as follows: a user provides few search keywords and the most relevant images are returned and presented in the form of thumbnails. Users can click on the image of interest to retrieve the high resolution image. In addition, the search engine will provide two types of related images: those that appear in the same paper, and those from other papers with similar image content. Retrieved images link back to their source papers, allowing users to find related papers starting with an image of interest. Currently, YIF has indexed over 140,000 images from over 34,000 open access biomedical journal papers.

URL: http://krauthammerlab.med.yale.edu/imagefinder/

Bassett Collection (Human Anatomy)

2009-04-29T13:10:00.000-07:00

Have a strong stomach for detailed anatomy images? The Bassett Collection of Stereoscopic Images of Human Anatomy is now available on the Stanford Lane Medical Library's website.

This is an astounding collection of 1,547 photographs with accompanying sketches and descriptions. Information about the collection:

"David Lee Bassett (1913-1966) was awarded his MD by Stanford University School of Medicine in 1939. He began teaching in the Department of Anatomy at Stanford University School of Medicine in 1939 and later also taught anatomy at the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1948 Bassett met William B. Gruber, inventor of the Viewmaster system of stereoscopic imagery. Bassett and Gruber collaborated on a seventeen-year project of creating three-dimensional photographic images of human anatomy using innovations in dissection pioneered by Dr. Bassett."

Any questions about permissions of use should be directed to Drew Bourn at dbourn@stanford.edu.

Understanding the Millennials

2009-04-29T10:40:00.001-07:00

My parents are Boomers, I'm a Gen-X'er, and my students are Millennials. If you teach Millennials, you will definitely agree that they carry a vibe very different from the previous two generations.

This presentation, "The Generations Game" is very worth going through. It will take you less than ten minutes to read it.

If you're a teacher - you can get a solid grasp of where your Millennials are coming from.
If you ARE a millennial - take a look and see what data has been acquired and interpreted about who you are as a generational group.

The presentation is co-authored by two educators in the United Kingdom - Steve Mellor, the Head of Youth and Kids Research at Harris Interactive Europe, and Cathy O'Donnell.

Millenials

View more presentations from Steve Mellor.

(click on the projection screen icon above to view the presentation in full screen mode)

Learning about how our students think will open the doors to how we can keep our students engaged as we develop our plans and innovations to keep medical education on the cutting edge. Knowing our audience is in the best interest of educators and students alike.

BEME Collaboration

2009-04-28T17:49:00.001-07:00

Oh, how I wish, how I wonder if there were such an ideal resource where I could find best practices for medical education research...

What's this now you speak of - BEME? What's that?

BEME stands for the Best Evidence Medical Education and is pronounced "bee-mee".

The BEME Collaboration is based in the United Kingdom. They describe themselves as:

"a group of individuals or institutions who are committed to the promotion of Best Evidence Medical Education through:

the dissemination of information which allows medical teachers, institutions and all concerned with medical education to make decisions on the basis of the best evidence available
the production of appropriate systematic reviews of medical education which reflect the best evidence available and meet the needs of the user, and

the creation of a culture of best evidence medical education amongst individual teachers, institutions and national bodies.

Specific features I like about BEME (find these in the left blue menu options):

Published Reviews: provide systematic reviews of medical education topics ranging from assessment to faculty development

(ie, BEME Guide No 10 - A systematic review of the literature on the effectiveness of self-assessment in clincal education)

Reviews in Progress: view many of the drafts of current reviews being completed

(ie, A systematic review of the literature on the effects of portfolios on student learning in undergraduate medical education)

Of course, be sure to explore the other sections. The "starting a review" section is a very helpful guide if you are preparing to write a systematic review.

You will have a greater appreciation for the concept of evidence-based education research after you've perused the wealth of information in BEME.

Googling Swine Flu

2009-04-28T16:40:00.001-07:00

Holy smokes! The swine flu has taken over the airwaves. As with anything alarming, it's best to start with grounding yourself by getting reliable information.

A current search for swine flu using Google gives you a swine influenza result from Wikipedia as a top result. That's all well and good, but if you aren't careful to look at the top of the Wikipedia page, you'll miss the fact that the information on that site is about the flu in pigs, not humans.

Thankfully, if you've read carefully, you'll have seen the link to current event: swine flu outbreak at the top of that Wikipedia page. By clicking on the History tab at the top of the swine flu outbreak page, you'll see that information has been changing several times an hour. That may not be all that bad, but we can start with a trusted resource to get reliable updates.

To find information from just the CDC website on this topic, search this phrase in Google: site:cdc.gov swine flu

The first result takes you to the official CDC swine flu page.

1 = the latest update is time stamped in red at the top

2 = there is a link to international information from the World Health Organization

3 = the options on the right allow you to get updates to this page via email, Twitter, or RSS. Videos & podcasts are available to learn more, and the site can be translated into Spanish.

Arm yourself with trusted information. Be smart, be safe, be healthy.

Google Quick Tip #18

2009-03-29T18:35:00.001-07:00

Quick - what's the capital of Estonia? What time is it there?

GOOGLE QUICK TIP #18

Google can help you find answers to these quick questions most of the time. Simply type in the words of your topic, such as:

capital of Estonia
time in Estonia

Other question and answer topics you can find include:

The national language of a country (ie, language in Belgium)
The type of national currency of a country (ie, currency of Tanzania)

The population of a country or city (ie, population of Jakarta)

The numbers are from different sources, but can give you a ballpark figure. To get more detailed answers, you should use more definitive resources, such as WorldAtlas.com

See this previous posting to find out how to convert values using Google.

Turning the Pages of Historical Medical Texts

2009-03-25T17:14:00.001-07:00

At the National Library of Medicine in Washington D.C. there is an electronic kiosk that allows visitors to browse the pages of historical medical textbooks. This Turning the Pages project is available now online for you to browse on your computer.

The interactive books are quite beautiful. For example, you can flip through the pages of Andreas Vesalius's De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body). This book is revered as "one of the most influential books in the history of Western medicine."

'It was conceived and written by 28-year-old Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), a professor at the University of Padua. Vesalius was both a gifted dissector and a learned scholar whose great contribution was to apply to anatomy the critical methods developed by the Renaissance humanist scholars."

Below is one of the famous images from Vesalius's series of skeletal men. This one shows a skeleton "contemplating human mortality."

Some features to point out when browsing any of these online books:

Click on a page to advance to the next page. Click on the left page to go back a page.
Unless you can read Latin, I suggest you click on the speaker icon to hear the narrator describe content on the pages you are viewing.
Use the magnifying glass icon to zoom over the text.
Hover the mouse over sections of the page and you can read curatorial notes describing the content.
Click the "T" icon to the left of the page to see the transcript of the audio for that page.
You can also print a page if you wish.

Even if you're not a historical book fanatic, I encourage you to browse these pages. It's a privilege to be able to see the details of a book written in 1543.

YouTube Education Channels

2009-03-23T13:25:00.001-07:00

With YouTube, who needs TV anymore?

It seems like anything and everything can be found on YouTube. Missed the Top 10 list on David Letterman last night? No problem, it'll probably be up on YouTube in a day or two. Heard about the amazing two-legged dog named Faith, but you missed her appearance on Oprah because you were busy working? Run a quick search in YouTube on faith two-legged dog oprah and, voila, your wish is their command.

Of course, if you want to see a video of your neighbor playing a nose flute on his porch, I'm sure you could find that on YouTube too.

To satisfy more than just your fluffy entertainment bug, YouTube thankfully has additional "Channels" that include educational videos amongst the many channel topics:

(1) Click on the Channels link to the left of the search box on YouTube
(2) Select Education in the left menu
(3) The top set of videos are under the category of Channels from YouTube EDU; click on that link to get to a full listing of broadcasts from educational institutions.
(4) You can run a search within the YouTube EDU search box (ie, type in medical school) and in the list of results, you can watch a video of Dr. Calvin Chou of UCSF lecturing on the physical exam and bedside manners.

You can also search the regular YouTube search box with words such as UCTV medicine to find videos from the University of California Television broadcasts. Or search on the words education medicine to browse videos pertinent to medical education.

The next time your boss walks into your office while you're watching YouTube, you can show her that it relates to work and is part of your research.

Watch, learn, and enjoy!

MedlinePlus - a Superb Health Resource

2009-03-18T14:42:00.000-07:00

If you already use MedlinePlus, congratulations for turning to one of the best, in my opinion, health resources on the Internet. If you've not used it before, my goal is to convert you to praising its virtues!

MedlinePlus (http://medlineplus.gov/) is a resource that debuted in 1998 put together by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Library of Medicine (NLM). Each and every resource on this site has been reviewed by the NIH and NLM. There are absolutely no advertisements on this website. Resources include health websites, news and research articles, drug information, medical encyclopedia and dictionary, organizational directories, images and videos, tutorials, clinical trials information, and multi-lingual patient handouts.

#1 Reason for using MedlinePlus instead of Google to search a health topic on the web: It saves you time!

As soon as I learned about MedlinePlus 3.5 years ago, I trained myself to go straight there, instead of Google, to get more information on a health topic if I'm not using a formal database, such as PubMed. Because each result in a MedlinePlus search has been pre-screened by the NIH and NLM, you can be confident that the information is accurate and trustworthy. The annoyance of having to guess what's reliable health information on a Google search is squelched when you use MedlinePlus.

Here are tips on how to best search MedlinePlus:

(1) Browse the Health Topics link to get a good overview of how the site is organized.

The page of any topic that you navigate to, ie breast cancer, will have a table organizing information into the categories of Basics, Learn More, Multimedia & Cool Tools, Research, Reference Shelf, and For You.

(2) When you use the search box to look for information, use the topics listed in the left menu of the results page to narrow your results.

Choosing a listing that has (National Library of Medicine) will get you to the same summary page on a topic as you found by navigating in the Health Topics section.

(3) Use the Drug & Supplements, Medical Encylcopedia, and Dictionary links to search any specific drug or medical term.

The results on these links can usually get you to your specific topic quicker than if you searched a term in the general search box.

(4) Use the Directories link to find doctors, dentists, hospitals/clinics, health care providers and facilities.

This feature can be especially helpful when you need to find specialists in a particular region of the U.S.

(5) The Other Resources link gets you to a list of medical organizations listed alphabetically and also by health topic.

This is helpful when you need to find any organizations that could help you or your patient find out more about resources on a specific topic.

(6) The Multiple Languages link provides health topics in over 40 languages!

For example, if you have a Hmong patient who needs literature about childhood immunization, MedlinePlus will provide that for you.

On the right side of the MedlinePlus homepage are four specialized resources:

Interactive Tutorials - this page provides extremely well-made and easy to follow tutorials that cover health topics and medical procedures.

Clinical Trials.gov - the NIH database of clinical trials. This is definitely a key resource when you need to find information on clinical trials.

Senior Health - the information is specific to older adults. The text size and color contrast are easily adjustable to be more readible. There is even a "Speech" option to have the text narrated to the viewer if they are having trouble reading the words.

Surgery Videos - this is an extensive collection of one-hour pre-recorded webcasts of surgical procedures. This can be helpful if you are interested in learning about a procedure or can stomach the details of an upcoming surgery that you or someone you know may be undergoing.

REMINDER: Use MedlinePlus as a starting place to find health information on the web instead of Google.

Try it out and let me know if I've managed to win you over!

Google Quick Tip #17

2009-02-28T22:59:00.001-08:00

How many ways can you slice your search results? Well, Google can show you by displaying your results in different formats.

GOOGLE QUICK TIP #17

By typing in the phrase view:timeline after your search words, your results will display as seen below.

For example, I searched for harold varmus view:timeline

* The graph summarizes how dates in your results are spread through time

* The higher bars represent a larger number of unique dates

* Click time periods on the graph to zoom in to that particular period of time

* Can search the text box to the right to specify any range of years, months, or days

You can also select any of the other options above the graph to display your results in a list, info, or map view.

For you history buffs, check out the results for a search on world war 2 view:timeline

Learn Anatomy with WinkingSkull.com

2009-02-28T22:12:00.000-08:00

Looking for a good learning tool to help you learn and test yourself on human anatomy? The WinkingSkull.com offers just that!

This free resource has detailed color images from the Atlas of Anatomy. When you create a free account, you get the full capability to test yourself on what you've learned.

(1) Go to the "My Account" link at the top right to create a free account

(2) Select the region of the body that you're interested in viewing via the left menu

(3) Select the labels to be "ON"

(4) You can also view the labels in Latin by selecting the "US English" box at the top right and switch to "Latin"

(5) You can zoom in and out, as well as hold down the mouse and move around the picture

(6) When you are signed into your account, you can test your knowledge of the anatomy you've reviewed

Be sure to check out their Quick Tips link in the top menu bar.

Watch this short non-narrated video to view these features [click on the "full size" link].

Brain Rules for Presenters

2009-02-27T18:05:00.000-08:00

There's never too much that you can learn about how to improve your presentation style.

John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist and affiliate Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington School of Medicine, wrote "Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School ."

Below is a presentation by Garr Reynolds, a presentation pro, based upon three of the 12 principles from Brain Rules. Don't be daunted by the fact that there are 131 slides. You'll fly right through them.

If you find this interesting, be sure to check out Dr. Medina himself in amusing short videos on his website, BrainRules.net

Brain Rules for Presenters

View more presentations from garr. (tags: reynolds garr)

Check out my other posts on improving your presentation style:
- Re-Thinking Presentation Design
- PowerPoint Presentation Tips

.

Science.gov

2009-02-27T17:19:00.001-08:00

The U.S. government has a free database that searches a multitude of resources. Science.gov is a joint effort of 18 scientific and technical organizations from 14 federal agencies that span from the Department of Health and Human Services to the Department of Defense.

You can search amongst: - 36 government databases - 1,850 websites - 200 million pages of U.S. government scientific information including research and development.

Suggestions on how to search Science.gov:

(1) Select the Advanced Search link to the right of the search box

(2) Uncheck the All Sources link to deselect the default of all boxes being checked

(3) Check the box(es) that you are interested in searching (ie, "Health & Medicine")

(4) To further narrow your search, click on the + sign in front of the check box to see all the resources for that topic

(5) As the search completes, you may see a pop up box that asks you to accept all the results. If so, agree to display all results

(6) Browse the left menu subtopics to navigate further into your results

(7) Use the "Sort by" option atop the results to re-sort by other options

Science.gov is an example of a federated search engine. It searches across several databases. This is a great way to get acquainted with and discover government resources. Give it a try and see what you think.

Google Quick Tip #16

2009-01-30T17:47:00.001-08:00

Twiddling your thumbs and wanting something to read that's not just today's headline news? How about getting your hands on some magazines to pass the time?!

GOOGLE TIP #16

Since December 2008, Google has made available archived and current issues of popular magazines that you can browse on the web. There is no comprehensive list of magazine titles. By clicking the browser's Refresh button several times, you can see the covers of several of the magazines.

Example of some magazines currently available:

Popular Science, Ebony, New York, Women's Health, Baseball Digest, Popular Mechanics, Runner's World, Better Nutrition, Organic Gardening

You can browse page by page of these fully scanned issues.

When viewing an issue, in the right column is a link to the Contents and Browse All Issues

If you have an iPhone or other mobile device that lets you surf the Internet, let me know if you can browse these magazines. In the meantime, if you'd like to know the foods to eat to boost your energy as a runner, peruse these pages.

View this short narrated video to see the features of browsing magazines in Google.

The Doctor's Channel

2009-01-30T15:12:00.001-08:00

Ever wish that you could get a quick update on what doctors are telling each other about the latest treaments? Wish you could watch rather than read the latest updates in medicine? Well, wish no further, The Doctor's Channel is here.

The Doctor's Channel describes itself as an "educational YouTube for doctors." It was created by New York physicians, David Best and Michael Banks.

These great videos are short, 1 to 3 minutes. Topics span 35 medical specialties, tips for medical students and educators, as well as newscasts from Reuters Health. Transcripts of the video and citation of the article being referenced are available below each video. Scroll down to the very bottom of the page to see related videos.

Here's a sampling of the site's content:

* Emergency Medicine
Preoperative briefings reduce operating room delays

* Medical Students - Listening to your patients
- Top 10 Tips for Residency Interviews
- Top 10 Tips for Matching Successfully

* Business of Medicine - Concierge physicians

Wordle to Create a Visual Cluster of Concepts

2009-01-30T13:47:00.001-08:00

I celebrated my birthday on January 20th. What a day! The entire day, I felt like a surfer riding a never-ending wave, thrilled and exuberant. Sitting with a large UCSF crowd on campus, I watched President Obama's swearing in and Inaugural Address . The celebration that day didn't stop until I finally turned off the tv after NightLine.

So what's this big prelude leading to? I wanted to share a novel tool called Wordle that allows you to paste in any text and have it create a visual representation, called a word cloud, of the major themes of the content. I tried Wordle out for the first time by pasting in the transcript of Obama's Inaugural Address. Below is the word cloud generated.

Creating the word cloud is very easy:

(1) Go to http://www.wordle.net & select the Create link at the top
(2) Paste in text or the URL of the site you want to Wordle
(3) Select Go or Submit
(4) When the word cloud is generated, you can change the layout, font, and color

I also created a word cloud of an abstract for the article below:

Dunn, LB, Iglewicz, A, & Moutier, C. (2008). A conceptual model of medical student well-being: promoting resilience and preventing burnout. Academic psychiatry, 32(1), 44-53.

Have fun with Wordle! It paints a picture that gives words an extra dimension.

PubMed Quick Tip #9

2009-01-30T10:20:00.001-08:00

Ever wonder how you can create an permanent HTML link that takes you to the results of a particular PubMed search?

Here's how:

(1) Run a PubMed search
(2) Select the Details tab below the search box
(3) Select the URL button in the middle of the Details page
(4) Copy the URL generated at the top of the page in the web address box
(5) Paste the URL into a website, wiki, email, document - anywhere you'd want to have it available

When you click on the link generated, you will always be taken to the results of that search in PubMed. This is a handy trick, if say, you want a link on a website you are maintaining, that takes you to all of the publications by David Irby that are listed in PubMed.

This non-narrated quick video tutorial shows you how.

Google Quick Tip #15

2008-12-18T15:32:00.000-08:00

You're either proudly finished with your holiday shopping or like the rest of us, putting off those last few gifts and will probably be frantically gift wrapping on Christmas Eve.

In either case, this is a great time of year to watch a movie in the theaters because all the blockbusters are released just in time for Oscar nominations. To get away from the shopping mayhem, or to further procrastinate, why not go see a movie? Google can help you locate a theater.

GOOGLE QUICK TIP #15

Type in the word movies followed by the zip code or city where you want to find a movie theater.

The first result should be a link to showtimes at the local cinemas. The results will have a link to the movie trailer, more information from IMDb (the Internet Movie Database), and the Google map of the theater location.

Go ahead and treat yourself to a movie!

Online Tutorials for Searching Clinical Medicine Resources

2008-12-18T14:44:00.000-08:00

I recently created a set of short 1.5 minute or less narrated online tutorials describing how to search for clinical medicine information. The resources demonstrated are AccessMedicine, STAT!Ref, MD Consult databases and PubMed.

I made the tutorials as a supplement to a workshop that medical students attend, teaching them how to find reliable resources and how to properly cite them. The information they find is used to write up their answers to research questions they generated during their problem-based learning sessions.

You can access the tutorials at http://tinyurl.com/ucsfpbl

Having made a few online tutorials series, I've made sure to have a PDF summarizing the main points of the tutorials. This handout is accessible in the left menu of the webpage.

Google Quick Tip #14

2008-11-21T17:11:00.001-08:00

Quick - what's the answer to 25.31 x 45.73? Don't have a calculator close by? Don't care to interest yourself in a long multiplication problem? No problem, Google can do the math for you!

GOOGLE QUICK TIP #14

The following symbols stand for these standard math operations:

Addition +
Subtraction -
Multiplication *
Division /
Exponent ^
Percentage of % of

Say for example, I want to calculate 15.87% of the total of 2.31 times 45.0 to the 5.99th power. I'd type in the following into Google to find the answer:

15.87% of (2.31*45.9)^5.99

More tips at http://www.google.com/help/calculator.html

Now that you know these tips, hide them from your school age children who are properly learning what we as adults no longer have the patience to do by hand or handheld calculator!

Using Eigenfactor to Measure Journal Ranking

2008-11-21T15:24:00.000-08:00

Eigenfactor is a free tool developed by Carl Bergstrom's lab at the University of Washington. It measures the impact of a journal based on the number of citations as well as journal pricing. They describe themselves as:

(1) Eigenfactor.org^TM scores and Article Influence^TM scores rank journals much as Google ranks websites.

(2) Eigenfactor.org^TM reports journal prices as well as citation influence.

(3) Eigenfactor.org^TM contains 115,000 reference items.
Eigenfactor.org not only ranks scholarly journals in the natural and social sciences, but also lists newsprint, PhD theses, popular magazines and more. In so doing, it more fairly values those journals bridging the gap between the social and natural sciences.
(4) Scores adjust for citation differences across disciplines.

(5) Scores rely on 5-year citation data.

(6) Scores are completely free and completely searchable.

Read more detailed explanations at http://www.eigenfactor.org/whyeigenfactor.htm

I especially like their visual mapping search display that animates the relevancy of topics and journals. You can get to this interface by clicking on the "mapping" tab and choosing the "interactive browser" option. In the right side of each visual map result, the top ten journals in that field are listed. Clicking on a journal title will reveal its Eigenfactor score.

The Journal Citation Reports (JCR) is a paid database from ISI Web of Knowledge that the Eigenfactor is comparing itself to, but they claim with added value. View the publisher's tutorial of how to search JCR. (Note: click on the white arrow in the bottom green menu bar to forward to the next page of the tutorial).

Read a more scholarly description of the Eigenfactor at http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2008/07/23/eigenfactor/

Wikipedia: Love It or Leave It?

2008-11-21T14:51:00.002-08:00

Wikipedia - honestly, who can say they have NEVER searched it before? The convenience and relative ease of finding information from Wikipedia is too tempting to bypass. Plus, Google floats Wikipedia pages pretty high up on a list of results.

For example, if you search myasthenia gravis in Google, Wikipedia is the FIRST result to appear. This entry beats out results from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and from the Mayo Clinic! What is at the top of a Google results list is the most linked to page on the search topic, not necessarily the most accurate or relevant page.

Over the past two years, I've noticed that some medical students cite Wikipedia as their source in writing up a short assignment. As an education librarian, this makes me twinge just the slightest bit and sigh. I teach students that Wikipedia can be a good place to start to get an overview of information, but it's NOT a resource you should cite. This is especially true if you are researching a health topic. But again, convenience wins out and some students cite Wikipedia anyway.

Wikipedia is a bit like the game of telephone that we played as children. The first person whispers the sentence to the person next to them, and as we all know, by the time the last person has received the information, it has morphed itself. That's the thing with Wikipedia and health information - most of it is quite good, but to cite it as your main resource could be risky. If by chance the information you gathered is inaccurate, you run a risk of doing harm with this information if you choose to make a medical decision for a patient based on what you find in Wikipedia.

So how then to make Wikipedia useful for finding more reliable information?

Thankfully, a well built Wikipedia entry has bread crumbs to lead you down the path to better sources of information.

(1) Look for the References link in the Contents box to see what resources were cited

(2) If a piece of information sounds interesting, look for a reference citation number (and click on it) at the end of that sentence.

(3) If it's a well-researched topic, you will see research articles listed. Clicking on the PMID or PMC link at the end of an article title will get you to the abstract in PubMed.

(4) Under the External links at the bottom, there may also be useful associations and other websites

Want to know how often a page has been edited?

Click on the history tab at the top of the page. You can see how busy people have been editing this information. Frequent editing should be a red flag of how much you can trust the information to be accurate.

Reuter's published an interesting article this month entitled Wikipedia often omits important drug information.

What's my final say on Wikipedia?

- If you find yourself on a Wikipedia result, it can be a lauching pad for finding better resources to link to and to cite those reliable resources instead of Wikipedia.

- It's a good place to get a gist of a topic.

I'm glad to see in the presentation below that a doctoral student in Communications at the University of Buffalo (SUNY) expressed his views on Wikipedia and how it can be used in education:

I Heart Wikipedia

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: education students)

PubMed Quick Tip #8

2008-11-21T14:51:00.001-08:00

Ever used the Sort by feature in PubMed? This much overlooked feature can actually prove quite handy when viewing a set of search results.

Results are displayed with the most recently published articles at the top of your results. You can re-sort the results to see if you can find out any additional information that migh be helpful.

For example:

- if you re-sorted the results by Author, you might find what authors publish more often on a certain topic

- if you re-sorted by Journal, you can see which publications come up multiple times. This can help you decide where you might want to publish your research in this related field or what other journals you should consider searching for more information.

View this short video demo

My First Venture into Video

2008-10-31T17:31:00.000-07:00

I recently attended the Internet Librarian Conference in Monterey, CA. It was an energetic gathering of tech savvy librarians from across America sharing their knowledge and enthusiasm of what they've created for new ways to deliver and find information online.

I attended several sessions covering how to make video podcasts. The idea of making things really come to life with video sounds just plain fun! So I put myself to work and play.

I found a free video editing program online called Jumpcut by Yahoo. It's a great first tool for me to try out because all I had to do was to upload videos and images onto the web. I could easily edit the video and add audio and text. The file is automatically compressed to the right size without me having to know anything about how to do that.

So here are the results of my first Jumpcut videos:

The video of Woods Hole, MA is taken from my camera phone, thus the indie "live action" bumpiness of walking and talking. The video is about twice as large as the original video display, so the film is slightly grainy, but you get a feel of what Jumpcut can do with video from a cell phone.

The Mission mural walk video was made from my digital camera photos.

If you're thinking of making videos to host on the web and want to start practicing, I'd highly recommend Jumpcut as a fast and easy tool to try. Have fun!

Google Quick Tip #13

2008-10-31T16:34:00.000-07:00

We've all used Google Maps to find directions and view street level locations, but did you know that you can get Google Maps mashups there too? TaxiWiz is an example of a Google Maps mashup - it's a combination of information of where to find taxis in a city with a Google Map of the city. It even gives you the estimated fare for any route that you map!

GOOGLE QUICK TIP #13

When you search a location in Google Maps, look at the very bottom of the left side bar for a link to User-created maps in the results listing. That link will take you to maps created by other people who have made Google Maps mashups.

For example, when I typed in a Google Maps search for Mission District San Francisco, under the user-created maps link, I found a map highlighting the 49 Mile Scenic Drive of San Francisco. This is a great map to use to get acquainted with the city because it also includes photos of most of the locations.

So go ahead, mash it up a little and see what you can find!

Re-Thinking Presentation Design (ppt)

2008-10-31T15:53:00.001-07:00

Time to update your presentation style? Everyone can dazzle with a fresh coat of paint in a new color.

This powerpoint presentation by Oliver Adria, an electrical engineering student in Cologne, Germany, is a testament to how revamping your presentation style can make your topic more memorable to your audience.

For other presentation tips, see my blog post in June.

Present! - Edition #1 Rethinking Presentation Design

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: ppt powerpoint)