Web site supports clinical care resourcesAlthough, historically the MUSC Library has supported all four areas of the university enterprise: research, education, public service and patient care, the library Web site—http://www.library.musc.edu/—has made major strides forward in support of the clinical care activity most recently.Far more than most medical libraries nationwide, the MUSC Library offers a wide variety of electronic, often full-text, resources including those on drug information, practice guidelines, article searches and full-text books that can be read online or printed. Presently more than 1,700 journal titles in the area of sciences, many of them clinical in nature, can be read online. Library researchers are all used to the traditional “online search” through PubMed MEDLINE or OVID MEDLINE that will yield citations to the journal literature. Now they can go much further to the information. What’s new this year is an extensive listing of the journals themselves online, ready to be read from the office, clinic or home computer. These journal titles are located through the Library Public Web or directly at <http://www.library.musc.edu/fulltext/journals.html>. Full-text online textbooks <http://www.library.musc.edu/fulltext/fulltext.html> feature some old standards now in digital format such as Harrison’s Family Practice Handbook, Merck Manual and the Guide to Clinical Preventive Services as well as a suite of several hundred medical textbooks presented by subject from Medicalstudent.com. All are ready for reading on the computer or printing pages. Two new resources, MD Consult <http://home.mdconsult.com/bin/login?Tag=/&URI=/php/home.html> and e-Medicine, are conglomerators of knowledge each offering a variety of approaches. MD Consult offers more online searchable books and journals, some drug information (and drug updates) and practice guidelines as well as a Today-in-Medicine section and patient handouts. e-Medicine offers professional and consumer level references to a wide variety of medical topics as well as a Differential Dx section, recalls and alerts, and In-the-News. An online set of calculating tools including algorithms, calculators, decision rules and diagrams is included. Both of these products offer CME opportunities. Formal use of practice guidelines has been slow to gain favor in South Carolina, but the Clinical Practice Guidelines and Alerts section of the Library Web site <http://www.library.musc.edu/cpg/cpg.html> offers more than a dozen sources including the Cochrane Library, National Guideline clearinghouse, the HSTAT Collection, and the Hospital Infections program from CDC. The Drug Information section of the Library Web site includes such resources as Martindale’s and the U.S. Pharmacopeia; however, its most intense resource is MicroMedex. This extensive product offers drug information (trade or generic), toxicology, drug interactions, dosing tools and a patient education section. Many MUSC health clinic staff know these by their tool names of DRUGDEX, POISINDEX, REPROTOX, DRUG CONSULTS, etc. In order to help point MUSC clinicians to other Internet sites of value in areas of work, the library staff has assembled a select group of resources in the following areas in the Selected Biomedical Resources by Discipline section: AIDS, Alternative Medicine, Cancer, Cardiology, Ear, Nose, and Throat, Emergency Medicine, Endocrinology, Family Medicine, Geriatrics, Hematology, Infectious Diseases, Immunology, Medical Ethics, Neurology, Nutrition, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Ophthalmology, Orthopedics, Pediatrics, Public Health, Pulmonary Medicine, Radiology, Surgery, Toxicology and Occupational Health and Urology. Suggestions of other sites to be added are welcomed and can be e-mailed to <http://www.library.musc.edu/feedback/feedback.html>. Watch for upcoming issues of The Catalyst where the MUSC Library staff will review various information and knowledge sources in the clinical area in more detail. Now the library brings these books and lectures online. Patient Care/Clinic Resources from MUSC Library
Drug Information:
Practice Guidelines: http://www.library.musc.edu/cpg/cpg.html Resources in Clinical Medicine Online: http://www.library.musc.edu/resources/clinical.html Search Medical Literature:
Full-Text Online Journals
Full-Text Online Books
Full-Text Online Knowledge Tools
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