JUNE MEETING FEATURES “USING THE INTERNET AS A CLINICAL AND SCIENTIFIC SOURCE"
Submitted By Jenny Garcia
Join us at Porter Adventist Hospital for our June 27 meeting. Our guest speaker will be Scott D. Phillips, MD, FACP, FACMT. Dr. Phillips is an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine in the Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. He is also a faculty member of the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center and in a group practice with Toxicology Associates in Denver. Dr. Phillips has authored over 100 articles and book chapters, and has edited several text books in the field of toxicology. The Porter Library and the Denver Medical Library have Occupational, Industrial and Environmental Toxicology edited by Michael Greenburg, Richard Hamilton and Scott Phillips, published by Mosby in 1997. Dr. Phillips lectures other toxicologists on the use of the Internet as a clinical and scientific information source.
MLA ATTENDEES TO SHARE THEIR PEARLS
CCML members who attended MLA in Orlando, Florida in May will share the ideas and news they gleaned from the meeting. This informal roundtable, to be held prior to the program during the June meeting, should be of interest to everyone. If you attended MLA and would like to talk about the meeting in general or a specific session that was exciting, contact Margi Stewart at AORN, 303-755-6304 ext. 276 or
mstewart@aorn.org.
You are invited to the annual CCML potluck picnic on Saturday, August 11th at 5:00pm.
Bring a dish to share to Paul Blomquist’s house. If you have questions about the picnic or need help with the driving instructions, call 303-315-6434 or see the address and driving instructions provided in the print issue of this Council Quotes.
MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION TRIPLE CHAPTER MEETING, NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA, OCTOBER 24-28, 2001
Submitted By
Greg Bodin
Join librarians from the Midcontinental, Southern, and South Central Chapters of the MLA for the first ever Triple Chapter Meeting to be held in New Orleans October 24-28, 2001.
Founded in 1718, New Orleans is one of the oldest cities in the country and probably the most exotic. Its location near the mouth of the Mississippi and its confluence of cultures - Latin, African, and Carribean, among others - make it a unique place to enjoy food, music, and architecture.
The meeting hotel, the Hilton New Orleans Riverside, offers the ideal location for the conference. The Hilton is an easy walk to the Vieux Carre, the original city of unique buildings including St. Louis Cathedral, Jackson Square and a multitude of restaurants and entertainment venues. The Hilton is also within walking distance of the Warehouse District, home to more restaurants, art galleries and museums, including the newly opened D-Day Museum. A short cab or streetcar ride takes you Uptown, where you can walk the Garden District, visit Audubon Zoo, or shop the five miles of stores on Magazine Street.
All meetings will be held at the New Orleans Hilton Riverside. The special conference rate is $190 for single and double rooms. Remember to specify the group code, TUM, when making reservations by phone or on-line.
Information will be updated regularly at the meeting page on the SCC/MLA website. Go to http://www.sccmla.org/mtg.html to find out more about the conference, including the call for papers and posters.
LONG-TIME MEMBER PROFILE: KRISTIN LOUDEN
Kristin Louden was born in New Jersey and lived there, Connecticut and New York until she was 12. She then moved to Minnesota with her family, where she went through high school. She earned her BA in history from Earlham College in Indiana, and her MA is library science from Indiana University. After undergraduate school she married a geologist named Dick Louden and they are still happily together. They had two children, Michael and Rebecca, and have lived in Ohio, Indiana and the Gulf Coast (Houston and New Orleans). Dick got a job in Denver in 1974 and they have lived here ever since.
Kristin’s career in libraries stretches back to junior high school. In high school she worked as a page both in her school library and the Minneapolis Public Library. She even got her picture in the Minneapolis paper along with several other pages in an article on the library. She worked all 4 years at Earlham College library, typing catalog cards and eventually supervising the other student assistants. She also cataloged their art slide collection.
In between undergraduate and graduate school she worked for a year at the Bowling Green State University Library running their reserve room and gaining more experience supervising student assistants. During graduate school, she worked as a student assistant in the Library Science Department and also worked part-time in the IU library, both as a reference assistant and in the catalog department. Kristin had a lot of experience when she received her degree, but none of it was considered professional.
Her first professional job was as a reference librarian at South Texas Junior College, Houston, Texas. It was a small staff so she did a bit of everything - reference, cataloging, book selection, and working the circulation desk. She loved the variety. Her next professional position was at New Orleans Public Library as head of Circulation. After that experience, Kristin stayed home for several years with her children and volunteered at her childrens’ elementary school. In 1979 she was appointed Head of Circulation at Denison, and she has been there ever since. Currently, she is doing cataloging part-time at Denison, and really loving it.
Kristin joined CCML in 1980. Over the years she was on the Education Committee, the Membership Committee, and the Professional Development Committee. She was on the Publicity Committee for MLA when the meeting was held in Denver in 1984. Although she is also a longtime member of MLA and MCMLA and a senior member of AHIP, she always felt the local group was the most important and that was where she wanted to put her effort.
Kristin's last position before (semi-) retiring in January 2000 was in the reference department at Denison. When I met Kristin in the mid-90’s she was in reference and I still remember my first impression of her. I remember thinking about Kristin, "This woman exudes authority." After entering the Emporia program, I went to Denison Memorial Library to learn about how library theories worked in a health sciences setting, and Kristin kindly shared her observations about reference work.
Kristin found reference work incredibly challenging. Sometimes the challenge is in dealing with a particular person rather than the question he/she presents. Sometimes the question itself is impossible, but you do the best you can. At Denison, Kristin experienced her best days when she felt she'd really learned something. Her worst days were when she went home feeling she'd handled something badly, hadn’t taken the time someone needed, or had let herself be upset by very human failings.
Sandi Parker says, "When I arrived at Denison as Head of Reference in 1993, Kristin was the Acting Head of Reference. I depended on her to orient me to my job, which she did in a gracious and thorough manner. Soon after that, she became the Reference Desk Supervisor and I relied on her for the next seven years to manage all aspects of staffing the desk and maintaining the reference collection. Besides librarianship, she has a love of music, books, travel, history, art and animals (to name a few), which always keeps her curious and enthusiastic. I’m sure the change to part-time work will open the door for her to pursue other interests more frequently, but I can never really picture her slowing down!"
I asked Kristin for her thoughts on how things have changed over the course of her career, and she said, "By the time I answer this, they will have changed again!" In her current job, there is no more typing of catalog cards. Push a button and they appear in the mail. There were NO computers when she started in the field. When she started at Denison, there were three computers, and one was brand new for the Circulation Department. "I remember Charles Bandy standing behind someone who was trying this computer for the first time, and yelling ‘Bang!’ We all jumped a foot thinking the thing had blown up!" Kristin accepted the new technology because the circulation records were much more accurate than a manual system. Kristin remembers when many people believed that the use of computers would mean less paper and fewer staff and comments, "I have yet to see that happen!" When I asked Kristin if she had any predictions for the future, she responded: "The only prediction I have for the future is more change at a faster pace than ever. I have a quote somewhere, which says, 'Predicting the future is easy. It's dealing with the present that's hard.' I guess it depends on what you predict and how dealing with the present demands affect how you anticipate what you'll need in 6 months."
Kristin continues to use library skills outside of libraries. People still know that she is a librarian (and always will be, retired or not). So she gets asked questions- “How do I find out about ….”, “Would a medical library have any information on …”, or her favorite, “Can you help me?” But to Kristin, the main library skills are organization, seeing patterns, and working with people, so of course she uses that all the time.
Since she retired, she and her husband do seem to have a little more time - not much, though! They have been to Seattle twice to see their beautiful granddaughter. They are planning a trip to England, perhaps in September, and a trip in May to Asheville, NC, to see her mother, who will be 85, and to attend a family reunion. Although she doesn't seem to have as much time as she'd like for her hobbies, she is starting to consider a new one. She has done some volunteer work at an elementary school library reading to the students, and she would like to do more of that.
In closing, Kristin says, "I would like to express my appreciation to the people in CCML who are some of the most articulate and intelligent people I’ve known. Without exception they work incredibly hard, believe in what they are doing, and genuinely care about what they do. They have fun on top of that - at least much of the time."
The following was e-mailed to everybody at Poudre Valley Health System to celebrate a special week in April:
If you answered “The Medical Library”, you’re probably right, but that’s not the answer our Laboratory manager was looking for. What he had in mind was “The Clinical Laboratory.”
I’d like to take a closer look at these and see how we stack up.
“accounts for less than 5% of the overall health system budget, yet impacts 80% of all clinical decisions made”
The first half of this statement is easy to compare. I added my operating budget, salary, and benefits, then divided this by PVHS’s overall expense budget. Actually, I’m costing us less than 0.05%! The second half is more problematical. For starters, I don’t know how many clinical decisions are made in the System. I asked the lab manager where he got these figures, thinking that that may give me this particular figure, but he told me they came from presentation he attended a few months ago. I haven’t had
time to track down and follow up with the presenter to see how he got them. All I really know is how many people were in the library when I was here or left evidence when I wasn’t (several of whom were just here to check e-mail, stocks, etc. on my computers); how many questions I answered; how many searches I did; how many items were checked out; and how many articles I photocopied or ILL’ed. That sort of thing. If I took the trouble I could probably calculate how many articles people photocopied for themselves, and keep better track of how many books were read in without being copied. I would assume that all of these impact health decisions. Getting back to the budget - in order to equal the Lab’s impact, I only need to affect 0.8% of all decisions. I suspect I do better than that. One place we do have it over the lab: Our information impacts not only the immediate decision for the individual patient, but, through supporting continuing education, we impact unknown numbers of future decisions.
“is the largest single provider of objective health and disease status information,”
That word “status” is key. We don’t have the information on how an individual patient is. That’s why we have the Lab. Take that word out, thought, and I’d be willing to go datum for datum with them. What’s more, their data is worthless without interpretation. They don’t do that, that I’m aware of; our materials can.
“is touted by experts as “the most reliable source of predictive information,”
I don’t know what experts he’s referring to. Of course, the only expert I can think of on our behalf is Sir William Osler, who once said, “It is astonishing with how little reading a doctor can practice medicine, but it is not astonishing how badly he may do it.”* He doesn’t give us a superlative like the lab’s “expert” gives them. Our claim to that title goes back to interpretation, and evidence - the accumulation of data to establish the patterns from which predictions are made. Clinical computer systems are only beginning to be able to accumulate all data and analyze patterns from a single institution at the touch of a button; we have the evidence that has been amassed more painstakingly from many institutions over decades.
“helps define risk-adjusted outcomes, improved risk management, and clinical performance measures, and provides unique information that is used by health professionals for disease prevention, problem solving, and care management? “
We do all that. I’d like to think we do it better, again, because we have the interpretation and the accumulated evidence. We’re cheaper, too. I haven’t asked, but I rather suspect that for the lab to get a single number often costs more than my $250 average annual journal subscription - which may contain an article that shows that that test was unnecessary.
The question now is, how do we prove it? I have a few ideas (which for want of space I’ll share in a future column), but no answers. Maybe you have some ideas or answers. Between the few studies that have been done; an MLA slide show; the recent videoconference at Children’s Hospital on our contribution to the bottom line; the Colleague Connection program on new statistics for the new age; and efforts like the MLA Benchmarking Survey, I have hope that we’ll find the way to do just that.
* Aequanimitas, with Other Addresses, “Books and Men”
THE PATIENT RESOURCE CENTER AT THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED MEDICINE
NOW OPEN
One of the first things you will notice about Shelly Limon when you meet her is her high level of enthusiasm and her goal-oriented vision. Shelly is an Inpatient Clinical Nurse Educator at University of Colorado Hospital. She is also the new librarian at the even newer Patient Resource Center that opened at the Center for Advanced Medicine in the end of April. When I visited her three weeks after the library opened, she was already well-versed in library management and the delivery of information. By the number of things that Shelly has accomplished in such a short tenure, you would not think that she is employed part-time at the Patient Resource Center.
Located adjacent to the Information Desk directly off the main entrance of the Anschutz Centers for Advanced Medicine, the Patient Resource Center is already a busy place. It is currently open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. When Shelly is not there, she has “computer savvy” volunteers and retired medical professionals to assist people. The goal is for the Resource Center to be open 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. weekdays. Although the room is small, the library is full of current information in the form of videos, books, pamphlets, patient handouts, and forty journal subscriptions with a special focus on cancer and nutrition. It also houses computers with Internet connections for public use, a TV with VCR, and a substantial reference collection. Shelly had two hundred books in Spanish and English ordered and en route in May. She hopes to find funding to be able to include the collection in the IMPULSE database.
Shelly says her greatest challenge is having a collection comprehensive enough to meet the variety of needs of patients there. “We need to cover everything, and that’s pretty broad.” The Cancer Center has three rooms set aside for libraries that are not yet developed. The Patient Resource Center is serving cancer patients and an array of other topics from rheumatology to pre-anesthesia to dentistry. Because the Lions Eye Institute is housed there, Shelly not only needs to provide information on visual disorders, but needs adaptive technology for equipment as well. Employees of the Centers use the library, and it is also open to health care providers.
Shelly graciously gave me a tour of the spacious building. Each wing of the building is a different color representing the natural colors of Colorado. The Infusion Center where patients receive chemotherapy spanned the entire west side of the building. It had the best views of the mountains, but all of the areas were beautifully landscaped and sunny. Each area had conference rooms and hook ups for family members’ laptops. The new University of Colorado Hospital building will be adjacent to the Centers. The hospital will start out as a 100-bed facility, but is expected to grow to five to seven times that size. Impressed? I was.
[NOTE: For complete information see printed Council Quotes.]
The membership committee welcomes new and renewing members to CCML: 2001-2002. We anticipate an exciting year of networking and learning. We have 102 members, with 99 renewing.
Please direct address changes, questions, and comments about your membership to Sue McGuinness at smcguinness@westwood.edu or 303-934-1122, ext. 752.
Non-golfers can’t understand, and golfers are unable adequately to explain, their fascination with the game. Some of us actually watch it on television (even when Tiger Woods is not playing). In an attempt to counter some of the snickering in certain quarters, here’s evidence that you can leave the golf course proudly sporting athletic-like injuries not much different from what a hockey player might have.
Take the yips for example: an injury by anyone’s definition, although usually blood-free. Golfers with the yips can’t control their nerves well enough to tap the ball in the hole from a foot away. A couple of serious papers have taken a look at what’s going on there. P. Sachdev was thoughtful enough to call it something else in the title of his 1992 article in Movement Disorders, “Golfers’ cramp: clinical characteristics and evidence against it being an anxiety disorder.” Well that’s good news. Those afflicted with it (Yippers? Yippies?) are apparently not mentally ill…exactly. Sachdev, who doesn’t reveal his own handicap, says out of one side of his mouth that it “is not an anxiety disorder,” while out of the other he says, “the important role of anxiety and arousal in its manifestation is, nevertheless, recognized.” Maybe he’s bipolar.
To make sure we know exactly how it’s supposed to work, a 1989 article in Neurology by a threesome led by K.D. McDaniel discusses “The ‘yips’: a focal dystonia of golfers.” This study was based on a 69-item questionnaire sent to 1050 professional and amateur golfers. 42% responded, and 28 % reported actually having the yips…it’s not revealed how many of them attribute their symptoms directly to having thought about the yips long enough to answer 69 questions about it. The symptoms reported included “jerks, tremors, and spasms affecting the preferred arm distally and primarily during putting.” A follow-up would probably show that over 90% of the victims are now avid bowlers.
Back pain is prevalent, but boring. Looking for variety, J. Wilks reports in the Australian Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport that of 300 patients with golf related injuries checking in to emergency departments over a six and a half year period, 37% had been hit by a club. Bear in mind that this is Australia, the Land Down Under, where, presumably, slices go to your left, hooks to your right, and per capita beer consumption may exceed the number of gallons of gas you put in your SUV each year. Alcohol-saturated blood can certainly have an impact on how likely you are to wander into your playing partner’s swing zone, and there’s no medication yet to cure pure stupidity. What about the golf cart, you ask? Well the same people who are out there speeding and raging in their cars are given the keys to cart number 53 with absolutely no questions asked. Guess what happens? E. G. Kelly, writing in Orthopedics, reports that he asked 280 orthopedic surgeons from 37 states about their experiences with people injured while using golf carts. One hundred nineteen reported 111 injuries ranging from a variety causing chronic disabilities, to spinal cord injuries, and even to death. Unplanned death, of course, can interfere with the rest of the foursome’s enjoying that end-of-the-round beer in the clubhouse, so be considerate.
Short of death, which is seldom remedied by rehab, what other types of injuries are lurking out there? There are reports of tibial stress fractures in two professional golfers, and a “deep femoral artery pseudoaneurysm caused by acute trunk and hip torsion.” Three cases are reported of vertebral compression fractures “sustained during golfing.” These people didn’t whack a one hundred year-old Oak tree on their follow-through…their backs broke “in mid-swing.”
There’s a report of a “stress fracture of the sternum in a golf player” in the International Journal of Sports Medicine. This could be a good thing, since the sternum is then pre-cracked, making it easier for the surgeon to cut through on his or her way to doing a quintuple bypass.
Not worried enough yet? Try this: according to Douglas Brunette, MD, writing in Minnesota Medicine, “golf is the most common recreational sport being played when a death occurs,” usually from heart attack, and not from murder or suicide, as might be suspected at first. Wider knowledge of this might lead to a little different transaction in the pro shop: “I need an 18 hole ticket, three Titleists, a cart, and a defibrillator.”
One of the most spectacular golf-related injuries was reported in the Journal of Trauma in 1996 by J. M. Watson. The title? “Golf club shaft impalement.” It seems that a couple of guys had a bit of a disagreement (about what we’re not told), and one proceeded to whale away on the other with “a three wood golf club” for-this is what it says-two hours. It didn’t happen on a golf course, but if it had, it’s safe to assume that several groups would have simply played through. In the end, the grip protruded from one side of the loser’s neck, and the rest of the shaft (minus the clubhead, of course) came out the other. Included in the article is a fairly grim photograph documenting the case. The story does have a relatively happy ending, since the impalee didn’t die or suffer any permanent damage…and he was looking for an excuse to buy a new three wood anyway.
NEED TO CONTACT THE CCML EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE?
The 2001-2002 CCML Executive Commit-tee can be contacted by email using the following addresses:
JUNE
Fireworks Safety Month (through July 4)
Prevent Blindness America
500 East Remington Road
Schaumburg, IL 60173
(800)331-2020 ; Contact: Information Center
http://www.preventblindness.org
National Safety Month
American Society of Safety Engineers
1800 East Oakton
Des Plaines, IL 60018-2187
(847)699-2929; Contact: Customer Services
http://www.asse.org
National Men’s Health Week, June 11-17
National Men’s Health Foundation
154-182 East Minor Street
Emmaus, PA 18098
(800)955-2002; (610)967-8620
http://www.nationalmenshealthweek.com
or http://www.nmhw.org
Eye Safety Awareness Week, June 28-July 5 United States Eye Injury Registry
1201 11th Avenue South, Suite 300
Birmingham, AL 35205
(205)933-0064; (205)933-1341 (fax)
Contact: Loretta Mann, Technical Director
http://www.hkerf.org/useir.htm
National Sobriety Checkpoint Week, June 30-July 4; Mothers Against Drunk Driving
P.O. Box 541688
Dallas, TX 75354-1688
(800)GET-MADD; Contact: Jodi Finley
email: info@madd.org
http://www.madd.org
MLS/MLIS EXTERNAL STUDY PROGRAMS
Know someone who wants to get an MLS/MLIS, but just can’t fit the Emporia or DU programs into their schedule? Try the following external study programs for alternatives:
LIBRARY TECHNICIAN ASSOCIATE DEGREE ONLINE
The Community Colleges of Colorado - CCC Online has an Associate of Applied Science - Library Technician degree available online.
For more information about the degree:
http://ccconline.org/Catalog/LTNdeg.cfm
For more information about CCCOnline: http://ccconline.org/
CCML ANNUAL MEETING A REMOTE SUCCESS
The CCML annual program, educational offering, business meeting, and lunch was held at the School of Nursing at University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, the St. Mary’s Family Practice in Grand Junction, and the Pueblo Community College. About sixty members and guests attended CCML’s first interactive video teleconference meeting.
Kathy Wells kicked off the program by presenting an interesting and unique perspective on diversity. She described how an individual’s interpersonal behavior can be governed by archetypes. She presented examples of how an awareness of that behavior can prevent misunderstandings that make our daily interactions more stressful and less fulfilling.
Beth Carlin then previewed upcoming changes to DOCLINE that will improve performance and allow more flexibility in account management and billing. She finished her talk by reviewing some new developments in PubMed, including the “Cubby” feature. Beth’s Powerpoint slide show has been posted to the CCML web site at: http://www.ccmlnet.org/denverccml.ppt
The business meeting followed, with about thirty members in attendance. The minutes of the meeting will be posted on the CCML web site at: http://www.ccmlnet.org/minutes.html
The attendees in the remote sites were pleased at the opportunity to be included in the CCML annual meeting. Lynn Bragdon, librarian at the VA in Grand Junction, closed the business meeting by commenting “I’ve been a CCML member for twenty years and this is the second meeting I’ve been able to attend.” Most attendees at the remote sites agreed that in spite of the extra planning responsibilities and some technical difficulties, the extra effort was well worth it! Special thanks are due to Joann Paine and Sandy Hudock, remote site arrangement coordinators.
The CCML Executive Committee has agreed to try another interactive video teleconference meeting this year. CCML will again schedule the annual meeting at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and remote sites.
Did you miss the Annual CCML meeting? Would you like to see a videotape of the presenters or the business meeting? It has been added to the Isabelle T. Anderson collection. The call number is: Z 673 .C719 VC1 2001 Tape 1 includes the program speaker, Kathy Wells. Tape 1 and 2 include the educational program by Beth Carlin. If you live outside the Denver metro area and cannot come to the library to check out the tape, please contact Lynne Fox: 303-315-4299, who will check out and mail the tape to you.
| OFFICERS AND COMMITTEE CHAIRS 2001 / 2002 | |
| Elected Officers | |
| President | Jerry Carlson |
| President-Elect | Jenny Garcia |
| Secretary | Lynne Fox |
| Treasurer | Daphne Norsworthy |
| Past-President | Paul Blomquist |
| Appointed Officers | |
| CQ Editor | Lynne Fox |
| CQ Associate Editor | Jeff Kuntzman |
| Mailing Coordinator | Bettye Snipe |
| Membership Database Coordinator | Sue McGuinness |
| Parliamentarian | Barbara Wagner |
| Standing Committee Chairs | |
| Education | Margi Stewart |
| Journal Locator | Gene Gardner |
| Membership | Sue McGuinness |
| Internet | Lynne Fox |
| Nominating | Glenn Pflum |
| Ad Hoc Appointments | |
| Colleague Connection Representative | OPEN |
| Colorado Library Marketing Council Rep. | OPEN |
| State Library Planning Committee Representative | Sue Coldren |
| Council Quotes is a bimonthly publication of the Colorado Council of Medical Librarians (CCML). CCML / P.O. Box 101058 / Denver, CO 80210-1058. Subscription is a benefit of membership. Editor, Lynne Fox; Assistant Editor, Jeff Kuntzman; Contributors, CCML members. |
Return to the CCML Main Page.
This page was last updated on June 14 2001.
Direct questions about this page to Lynne Fox.
http://www.ccmlnet.org/CQMayJune01..html