AccessSurgery – shows the latest surgical techniques

Counseling and Therapy in Video – view counseling sessions and techniques, lectures and interviews

Nurse Theorists: Portraits of Excellence – interviews and histories on nursing’s premiere scholars

Sports Medicine and Exercise Science in Video – videos on injury assessment and treatment

Films on Demand – covers a large subject area, but includes films from the likes of PBS, HBO, and other credible sources on health sciences topics

Another excellent aspect of these video streaming services is that they can be accessed from off-campus with a PirateID and many provide a direct link to the actual videos which makes them easy to link from within BlackBoard or a class website. If you’re interested in knowing more about how to access and use these videos, you can Contact Us for more information.

What is ePSS?

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has developed an Electronic Preventive Services Selector (ePSS), as a free, quick, hands-on tool designed to help primary care clinicians and health care teams identify, prioritize, and offer the screening, counseling, and preventive medication services that are appropriate for their patients. The ePSS is based on the current, evidence-based recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) and can be searched by specific patient characteristics such as age, sex, and selected behavioral risk factors. The ePSS is available on both a web-based platform and as a downloadable app. Installation instructions can be found here: http://epss.ahrq.gov/PDA/index.jsp

Using ePSS

By simply entering your patient’s characteristics, such as age, sex, and selected behavioral risk factors, you can view a list of all the recommendations matching the criteria entered. Results are then grouped according to graded recommendations by the USPSTF.

Additional Features

ePSS includes useful tools for implementing recommendations into practice. Tools include screeners, patient education brochures, risk assessment tools, calculators, and clinical recommendation summaries. Users can browse by topic, save searches, get automatic recommendation updates, and even email & print their recommendations or saved searches.

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Solve the Outbreak – CDC

What is it?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released a new iPad app called “Solve the Outbreak”, allowing scientists and gamers alike to play disease detective. The app lets users assume the role of a disease outbreak investigator in the agency’s Epidemic Intelligence Service by navigating a few fictional outbreaks based on real-life events. Users will get clues, review data, and make decisions to determine the cause of the outbreak.

In the game, participants will also get health tips, definitions, and general information about epidemiology (the science used to investigate outbreaks and to monitor patterns, causes, and effects of diseases on the public). The “Solve the Outbreak” app is available in the iTunes store: https://itunes.apple.com/US/app/id592485067

For more information check out the CDC Press Release here: http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2013/p0220_ipad_app.html

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Read by QxMD

What is Read by QxMD?

Read by QxMD provides a customizable, simple interface to discover new research and provide seamless access to medical literature. Essentially, Read by QxMD creates a personalized digital medical journals, allowing you to keep up with the latest research and access full text PDFs with one tap.

Features

• Browse through 1000s of topic reviews
• Keep up with the latest new research that will impact your practice
• Get full text PDFs with one tap
• Browse through 100s of topic reviews
• Read your favorite journals
• Share articles with colleagues over email and other social medias
• Organize and review your personal collection of articles

Availability

As of March 1, 2013, Ready by QxMD is only available in the iTunes store: https://itunes.apple.com/app/read-by-qxmd/id574041839?ls=1&mt=8

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Calculate by QxMD

What is Calculate by QxMD?

A next generation clinical calculator and decision support tool for iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry, and is freely available to the medical community. Calculate by QxMD is focused on highlighting tools that are actually useful in clinical practice and serve to impact diagnosis, treatment, or determine prognosis. The basic idea behind Calculate by QxMD is that it is helping you make decisions, not just calculate numbers. Calculate by QxMD has also been featured as one of the top ten iPhone medical apps for physicians and residents.

Features

• Point-of-care tools in the areas of cardiology, internal medicine, nephrology, general practice, hematology, gastroenterology, emergency medicine, oncology, orthopedics, respirology, neurology, neurosurgery, general surgery, and obstetrics.
• Converts recent research publications into practical handheld tools – knowledge translation at its best
• Automatically adapts to your self-described clinical practice
• Unique “Question Flow” technology gets you answers fast!
• Detailed references with PubMed integration
• More than 150 Unique calculators and Decision Support Tools

Availability

As of March 1, 2013, Calculate by QxMD is available for iPhones, iPads, Android devices, and Blackberry devices. http://www.qxmd.com/apps/calculate-by-qxmd

Let’s start with the computers.  Like I said before they are touchscreen so you can manipulate the screen with your fingers instead of the mouse.  Most people prefer to stick with the mouse, but the option is there if you want to use it.  You will find that these new computers do take a bit longer than your average computer to log in.

This is because we run a program called DeepFreeze every day, so that changes you make to the computer are not saved.  When no information is saved it means the computer has to recreate your user profile every time you log in.  We do this for your security and to make the likelihood of the computers catching a virus very slim.  This also allows you to install any program you want on the computers while you are using it.  You will not find any restrictions, as you are an administrator on the computer.  When the computer is rebooted DeepFreeze will wipe all information that is stored on it so your personal documents are never left on the computer for other people to open.

Now, since you will lose all information when the computer is rebooted we highly recommend you do not save important documents to the computer.  When you need to work on a document that was emailed to you, it is best to immediately save it to your Piratedrive or a flash drive.  When you open a document from your email it automatically saves it to a temporary folder which is just that, temporary.  We have seen people lose documents they have spent hours working on because it was not saved properly.  Your Piratedrive is automatically connected when you log into any computer on ECU’s network and can be accessed outside of ECU through Onestop or the ECU VPN.  ECU just upgraded everyone’s Piratedrive to a massive 40 gigabytes so don’t worry about putting too much information there.

So let’s say you don’t want to mess with your Piratedrive and you want to store your important documents on your flash drive.  That will work as well, but what happens when you walk out of a lab and forget to grab your flash drive?  We find about 3 to 4 flash drives a month that people have left behind in our lab.  Normally we can look at the document author on documents to find out who left it so we can get it back to them.  Sometimes when we check these drives there is nothing on there to let us know who owns it.  We highly recommend that when you first buy a flash drive you put a document on it titled something similar to “If Found” and put your name and email address or phone number in the document.  This will allow us to quickly return your flash drive especially if you keep important files on the drive.

Most people come to the lab to use the printers.  In January alone there was over 164,600 pages printed or about 1800 pages a day on only three printers.  In addition to printing from the lab computers, we also offer wireless printing from your personal laptop as well.  This can be done on your Mac or Windows laptop.  We have an instruction sheet for Mac users to install the printers wirelessly and are working on one for Windows users.  Just see the student at the front desk of the lab if you wish to install these printers on your laptop.  Note: you will need to be in the lab or on the reference floor to print wirelessly to the lab printers.  Please also note that we cannot install the color printer wirelessly.

If you’re looking for a little bit lighter reading, I recently came across a pretty great feature on my Kindle Fire. It’s called the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. The Kindle Owner’s Lending Library allows eligible U. S. Amazon Prime members who own Kindle devices to choose from thousands of books to borrow for free including more than 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers. You can borrow one book a month, with no due dates.  You must be an eligible paid Amazon Prime member or a paid Amazon student member.  You can only access the library on the kindle device that is registered to your prime account. On the kindle fire you can access the library directly from the store page. It looks like this:

Image copyright Amazon.com

Another great resource is your local public library! In Greenville, NC we have Sheppard Memorial Library who offers eBooks and audiobooks at no charge with a valid library card through NC Live & 3M.

*the ebrary app is available to download for Android and iOS users; see our Mobile Resources guide for more information:http://libguides.ecu.edu/mobileresources

The lead investigator of the study, Stephanie Kuhlmann, described receiving multiple text messages during a shift, “Personally, I probably get 50 to 100 text messages during a shift,” she added. “But unlike many physicians, I don’t carry a pager, so everything comes to my cell phone.”  Of those that received work text messages, 12 percent indicated receiving more than 10 messages a shift and five percent reported receiving over 20 messages a shift.

The majority of physicians are using their personal phones for this form of communication (41%) as compared to 18 percent that have a hospital assigned phone.  When questioned about their ideal way to communicate brief messages, 27 percent indicated that text messaging was their preferred method  as compared to 23 percent that preferred the pager system and 21 percent that reported face-to-face communication.

Although text messaging as an alternative to paging is growing in popularity, only a small percentage of physicians indicated that their hospitals offered a service that would encrypt text messages (10%).  This is a cause for concern because the content of the text messages can often times be considered violations of HIPAA.  The study indicates the need for this type of technology to be regulated and policies instated when used in clinical settings.   Kuhlmann indicated that, “We are using text messaging more and more to communicate with other physicians, residents and even to transfer a patient to a different unit…We’ve had such a rapid increase in cellphone use, and I’m not sure that hospitals have caught up by putting in place related processes and protocols.”

(http://mobihealthnews.com/18813/pediatricians-increasingly-favor-sms-over-pagers-but-hipaa-concerns-loom/#more-18813 )

(http://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/pages/More-Pediatric-Hospitalists-Using-Text-Messaging-to-Communicate.aspx)

The deposit process is easy and only takes about the same amount of time as it would to upload a picture on a photo sharing website. And if you ever leave East Carolina University the file will be maintained, so if you want to share the link to your work with others or add it to your CV, you can be assured it will not change. And anyone doing a Google search can find your work. So, let’s say there’s someone else out there in the world doing the same kind of research you are doing – if they Google the search terms that you use to tag your work in your ScholarShip records, they will be able to easily discover your scholarly activities There’s lots more information about this on the deposit process page: http://thescholarship.ecu.edu/deposit.

The ScholarShip is also now the home of ECU’s theses and dissertations. If you want to see what our graduating students have researched and created while at ECU, please check it out – theses, dissertations, and all other types of documents are browsable here.

How is Laupus Library Using QR Codes?

You can find QR codes all around the library!  Laupus Library is using QR codes to link you to our Ask-a-Librarian services, the calendar to make reservations in some of our group study rooms, the library’s new book & popular book blogs, the Equipment Loan Checkout service, our Classes page, our new Mobile Resources research guide, and more! Simple scan any codes you find with your mobile phone and you will have immediate access to these resources and services on our phone.

(QR Code for Laupus Library)

Recommended Apps for each phone:

Barcode Scanner for Android

NeoReader for iPhone

Barcode Scanner for Blackberry

Laupus Library commissioned Stuart Kent, an ECU alumnus and Greenville furniture maker and designer, to craft a 14-foot black cherry wood and glass display cabinet for the second floor of the family medicine center to highlight exhibits from the Country Doctor Museum.The first rotating exhibit, “Compounding Remedies: Tools of the Trade from Early Pharmacies,” will feature artifacts used by country doctors and pharmacists including a turn-of-the-century show globe. Show globes were vases filled with colored liquid used by apothecaries, pharmacies and drug stores to let customers know they could compound medicine. Other artifacts will give insight on how remedies were measured, mixed and dispensed.  You can check out pictures of the cabinet making process on his blog.

In addition to this great project for Laupus Library, Stuart Kent has been awarded an at-large Fulbright Scholar grant to lecture and research on the campuses of the National University of Costa Rica and the Tropical Forestry Initiative field station Los Arboles during the 2012-2013 academic year.You can follow him on Twitter (@stuartkentart) to see latest updates about this exciting journey!