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:: Jun-Jul 2008 Welcome to our Monthly Online Newsletter!Highlighted Article
Repeated Past Article:
The Internet gives patients control over their doctors “There's been a revolution in how we relate to doctors. Patients are no longer passive subjects but health care consumers. Doctors have been demoted from healers to "providers." I have one friend who didn't like the specialist assigned to a family member, so, as he put it, he "fired" the doctor (by insisting the hospital find another one). … In the Internet age, ordinary people can inform themselves about virtually any health issue. Of course, a bank manager or high school teacher who is diagnosed with colon cancer isn't going to become an expert on the disease overnight, but he or she could learn enough, in short order, to ask the surgeon useful questions. If I were diagnosed with cancer on a Friday, you can bet that by Monday I'd know what my options were and the risks associated with them; what new surgical procedures were being developed; what drug trials were taking place, and where; what institutions had the best reputations for treating the illness. In the old days, civilians did not have easy access to such information. The spread of health literacy has eroded the power imbalance in the patient-doctor relationship.“ GuidelinesAHRQ - National Guideline Clearinghouse Finalized Out-of-Hospital Patient Management Guidelines (Poisoning Guidelines) Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement (ICSI) Guidelines Internet Sites
Featured siteNIH - NIAMS How to Find Medical Information Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs DIPEx.org: personal experiences of health and illness NICE - Public Health Excellence (Evidence) NIH - How To Evaluate Health Information on the Internet: Questions and Answers NIH - NIAMS How to Find Medical Information NLM/NIH - Finding Medical Information in MEDLINE NLM/NIH - MedlinePlus in the News NLM/NIH - National Library of Medicine Guide to Finding Health Information Related InfoMedSearch TopicsRelated Topics - Highlighted ArticlesEvidence-Based MedicineProviding evidence-based answers to complex clinical questions: evaluating the consistency of article selection. (Acad Med. 2005) "PURPOSE: Health care providers must maintain familiarity with current biomedical evidence, but clinicians struggle to maintain their awareness of current research because of the demands of daily practice and the exponential growth of medical knowledge. Clinical information specialists (informationists), trained experts in reviewing and filtering the medical literature in response to complex clinical queries, may be able to assist practicing clinicians. Δ RESULTS: In general, both informationists and physicians trained in research methodology had a high degree of intergroup agreement for ranking article pertinence, while the generalists were less likely to agree on pertinent articles. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that informationists consistently select articles relevant to answering complex clinical queries and may assist practicing clinicians by providing information relevant to patient cases."
Evidence-Based MedicineHistory and development of evidence-based medicine. (World J Surg. 2005) "This article illustrates the timeline of the development of evidence-based medicine (EBM). The term 'evidence-based medicine' is relatively new. In fact, as far as we can tell, investigators from McMaster's University began using the term during the 1990s. EBM was defined as 'a systemic approach to analyze published research as the basis of clinical decision making.' Then in 1996, the term was more formally defined by Sacket et al., who stated that EBM was 'the conscientious and judicious use of current best evidence from clinical care research in the management of individual patients.' Δ Computers and database software have allowed compilation of large amounts of data. The Index Medicus has become a medical dinosaur of the past that students of today likely do not recognize. The Internet has also allowed incredible access to masses of data and information. However, we must be careful with an overabundance of 'unfiltered' data. As history, as clearly shown us, evidence and data do not immediately translate into evidence based practice."
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