Levy Library

New BMJ Resources at the Levy Library

The Levy Library is pleased to announce access to two new resources from BMJ: BMJ Learning and BMJ Case Reports.

BMJ Learning offers CME/CPD modules through text, video and audio modules. This database will provide recommendations based on your information provided at registration and remember which modules have been completed.

BMJ Case Reports Case Reports is a journal that contains thousands of peer-reviewed cases in many disciplines for reference.  The Mount Sinai subscription also covers fees for submitting cases o be published in this journal.  

These resources are both available by going to the Levy Library databases page and searching for BMJ. 

Embase, a Major Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Database, Now Available from Levy Library

We are very pleased to report the addition of Embase to our growing collection of resources supporting Mount Sinai's initiatives in translational research and evidence-based medicine. Embase, the online version of the print index Excerpta Medica, is an international biomedical and pharmacological database that covers the journal and conference literature. It has significant strengths in the areas of pharmaceutics, pharmacy and toxicology; occupational health; environmental health; alternative medicine; biotechnology; and occupational and environmental health. Embase covers over 7,000 journals, over 25% of which are not in MEDLINE.

Embase is known for its timely, in-depth indexing using Emtree, a hierarchically ordered controlled thesaurus. Emtree, like the MeSH vocabulary used to index MEDLINE, provides a consistent description of biomedical terminology. Emtree is noted for its rich vocabulary for drugs and chemicals, facilitating discovery of reports on drug combinations, adverse drug reactions, medical devices and trade names, drug trade names across the globe, and clinical studies and trials.

Because Embase covers journals not in MEDLINE, and because the Emtree indexing language offers additional avenues to identify reports on biomedical topics, Ebmase is usually needed for comprehensive literature searches, systematic reviews and meta-analyses. In particular, The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions recommends that Cochrane review teams search MEDLINE, Embase and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) to ensure that as many relevant studies as possible are identified.

Our version of Embase is delivered on the OvidSP platform. To access EMBASE, connect both on- and off-campus from the link on Levy Library's Databases page, and select it from the list of Frequently Used Databases at the top. Or, link directly to Embase here.

We're planning workshops on using Embase early next year, so stay tuned to our postings of upcoming classes. In the meantime, OvidSP offers detailed information about searching EMBASE on their platform here. And as always, we encourage you to Ask a Librarian.

UpToDate

UpToDate has recently released version 17.3, which now includes topic reviews in Adult and Pediatric Emergency Medicine. To quickly review important medical findings since the last release, select "What's New", found on the top left of the search screen. From there you can choose "Practice Changing UpDates" or updates by speciality.

NEW - JAMAevidence and AccessAnesthesiology

We're happy to announce a couple of new resources that we think people will find very useful!

JAMAevidence is from, of course, JAMA, and provides evidence, guides, calculators and more to help find the best evidence available and translate that into clinical decisions. It's based on the popular textbooks Users' Guides to the Medical Literature: A Manual for Evidence-Based Clinical Practice and The Rational Clinical Examination: Evidence-Based Clinical Diagnosis, and also includes a lot of extra features.

AccessAnesthesiology is a companion to Library favorites AccessMedicine, AccessEmergencyMedicine and AccessSurgery. Quickly search important anesthesia guidelines and textbooks (including Longnecker's Anesthesiology, Morgan's Clinical Anesthesiology and more), view videos and diagrams of procedures (retrograde intubation, anyone? Bronchoscopy?), use the calculator for essential measurements and create a self-assessment quiz to study for the boards.

We hope these are useful for you! Please let us know what you think, and if there is anything else you need!

Clinical Skills Week Resources

Last week was clinical skills week, when we got to meet all of the medical students entering their third year and learning some of the skills they'll need for their clerkships. One of those skills is being able to find the information necessary for patient care, so reference librarians Polly and Laura shared some of their favorite resources. Here they are, with a word about each:

PubMed: What library workshop would be complete with mention of PubMed? (OK, so there are a few). Specifically, remember MeSH searching, Boolean operators and the Limits tab, and try the Clinical Queries tool (found in the blue bar on the left side of the PubMed homepage) when you are looking for research studies for specific question types - e.g., therapy, diagnosis, prognosis, etc.

AccessMedicine, MDConsult, and the E-books database are good sources for textbook-style background information and sometimes images, videos, guidelines and more.

UpToDate (on campus only), eMedicine and PIER are full of clinical topic reviews that combine the latest evidence with expert recommendations.

ACP Journal Club and the Cochrane Library are evidence-based medicine resources: ACP Journal Club provides structured reviews and commentary on selected high-quality articles from 100+ journals, while the Cochrane Library publishes systematic reviews and meta-analyses of highly relevant topics. Search them separately using the above links, or together using EBM Reviews.

And, as always, you can Ask a Librarian. Happy third year!

New: AAP Grand Rounds

Pediatrics types will be interested in our new online resource, AAP Grand Rounds. From the American Association of Pediatrics, AAP Grand Rounds pulls relevant, methodologically sound pediatrics articles from 75 journals. Physicians then summarize and comment on the articles to help you stay abreast of the latest developments in the field. The current issue covers a wide range of topics ranging from maternal influenza vaccination to MRSA in bath water to pediatric injuries from golfballs and inflatable backyard bouncers. Past issues are of course fully searchable. We think of this resource as a pediatrics version of ACP Journal Club, which is also definitely worth a look if you're not familiar with it yet.

New Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment

The 2009 edition of Current Medical Diagnosis & Treatment is now available online from AccessMedicine. Fully searchable and browsable, it contains up-to-date information on over 1000 diseases and disorders. From hiccups to heart disease, CMDT provides fully referenced information on diagnosis, treatment, complications and more. Read the text for a quick summary of the current state of knowledge (including discussions and graphics of diagnosis and treatment options) then follow the links to PubMed citations of systematic reviews and take a look at the evidence. This online version of the book also contains extra chapters that are not included in the print version.

If you are on campus you can link straight to Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment 2009; if you're off-campus follow the link to AccessMedicine to login with your Mount Sinai ID and password, then look under the Textbooks tab for this title.

PIER Now Available from ACP's Interface

Fans of PIER: The Physician's Information and Education Resource, (and we know there are a lot of you) will no longer have to use PIER through the STATREF! interface.  The Library is pleased to announce that you may now go directly to ACP's more user-friendly interface to access PIER.  Produced by the American College of Physicians, PIER contains concise practice recommendations on over 400 diseases and disorders.  Information includes treatments, screening, ethics, complementary medicine, and procedures. And, in contrast to other resources, such as UpToDate and eMedicine, PIER's recommendations and supporting references are given a level of evidence rating (ex. A, B, C).