Medical Reference for Non-Medical Librarians (most resources are free and online)

Medical Reference for Non-Medical Librarians.

Great advice and nice listing/categorizing of links

Contents of this site include

• General Tips on how to assist customers/patrons/patients
• General Online Health/Medical resources
• Popular medical guides
• Dictionaries
• Evidence Based Medicine Resources
• Disease,Diagnosis,Treament
• Nutrition
• Drugs
• Mental Health
• Diagnostic Tests
• Alternative Therapies
• Ask an Expert

 

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[Online Resource]Digital Librarian: a librarian’s choice of the best of the Web

Digital Librarian: a librarian’s choice of the best of the Web.

Digital Librarian is a carefully selected list of great resources on just about every t0pic one would expect covered in a public library setting.

Librarian Margaret Vail Anderson updates this listing almost every month.

Of particular interest in the health/science areas are

• Food & Drink
• Health and Medicine
• Psychology
• Search Tools

Medical Apps Forum – via News from the Krafty Librarian

Medical Apps Forum.

… iMedicalApps has just launched a new medical apps forum for the medical community to discuss mobile apps and technology. 

Not only will there be general discussions about various apps but they will have specialty areas for people to discuss specific issues without the post getting lost or  bogged down in the general discussion area. In addition the editors and writers on iMedicalApps will be answering questions about mobile technology in the forum.

iMedicalApps is a great resource for reading articles about medical apps for smartphones, hopefully the forum can take that information and extend it and keep it current and practical.

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Forgetting is Key to a Healthy Mind

From the Scientific American Preview

Solomon Shereshevsky could recite entire speeches, word for word, after hearing them once. In minutes, he memorized complex math formulas, passages in foreign languages and tables consisting of 50 numbers or nonsense syllables. The traces of these sequences were so durably etched in his brain that he could reproduce them years later, according to Russian psychologist Alexander R. Luria, who wrote about the man he called, simply, “S” in The Mind of a Mnemonist.

 

Want to read the rest of the article? Check your local academic or public library.

It just might be available online through the library’s Web pages

Microbial communities on skin affect humans’ attractiveness to mosquitoes – could be basis for antimalarial research

Image via Wikipedia

[Author's note - I came down with malaria at least 3 timeswhile a Peace Corps volunteer in Liberia, West Africa (1980-81). Fortunately malaria was less virulent in West Africa than East Africa at the time. So, each bout was similar to a one day flu bug. Each time I came down with malaria, it was because I forgot to take the weekly preventive and came down with malaria two days later]

From the 29 December 2011 Eureka News Alert

The microbes on your skin determine how attractive you are to mosquitoes, which may have important implications for malaria transmission and prevention, according to a study published Dec. 28 in the online journal PLoS ONE.

Without bacteria, human sweat is odorless to the human nose, so the microbial communities on the skin play a key role in producing each individual’s specific body odor. The researchers, led by Niels Verhulst of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, conducted their experiments with the Anopheles gambiae sensu stricto mosquito, which plays an important role in malaria transmission. They found that individuals with a higher abundance but lower diversity of bacteria on their skin were more attractive to this particular mosquito. They speculate individuals with more diverse skin microbiota may host a selective group of bacteria that emits compounds to interfere with the normal attraction of mosquitoes to their human hosts, making these individuals less attractive, and therefore lower risk to contracting malaria. This finding may lead to the development of personalized methods for malaria prevention.

###

Citation: Verhulst NO, Qiu YT, Beijleveld H, Maliepaard C, Knights D, et al. (2011) Composition of Human Skin Microbiota Affects Attractiveness to Malaria Mosquitoes. PLoS ONE 6(12): e28991. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0028991

Read the entire news release

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Alzheimer’s: Diet Patterns May Keep Brain from Shrinking

From the  29 December 2011 Science News Daily article

 People with diets high in several vitamins or in omega 3 fatty acids are less likely to have the brain shrinkage associated with Alzheimer’s disease than people whose diets are not high in those nutrients, according to a new study published in the December 28, 2011, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology…

Read entire article

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Doctors Are Cautious, Patients Enthusiastic About Sharing Medical Notes

From the 19 December 2011 Beth Medical Newsletter

Study gauges baseline interest in three-site OpenNotes trial

Date: 12/19/2011
BIDMC Contact: Jerry Berger
Phone: 617-667-7308
Email:jberger@bidmc.harvard.edu

BOSTON – Patients are overwhelmingly interested in exploring the notes doctors write about them after an office visit, but doctors worry about the impact of such transparency on their patients and on their own workflow, a Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) study suggests….

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While many of the more than 100 primary care doctors who volunteered to participate in this experiment predicted possible health benefits from allowing patients to read their notes, the majority of those who declined participation were doubtful about positive impacts. And among the 173 doctors completing surveys, the majority expressed concerns about confusing or worrying patients with the content. Doctors also anticipated that they would write their notes less candidly and that responding to patient questions might be exceedingly time-consuming.

In contrast to the doctors surveyed, the nearly 38,000 patients who completed the baseline survey were almost uniformly optimistic about OpenNotes, and few anticipated being confused or worried

“The enthusiasm of patients exceeded our expectations,” wrote Walker. “Most of them were overwhelmingly positive about the prospect of reading visit notes, regardless of demographic or health characteristics.”

More than 90 percent favored making the notes available. Well over half anticipated improved adherence to their medications, 90 percent expected to feel more in control of their care, and four out of five predicted they would take better care of themselves….

Read the entire news article

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