Remote Library Access for Students during Summer

By Joan Schlimgen, AHSL-Tucson

There have been a few inquiries from continuing UA students, who are reporting that they no longer have remote access to the library’s eResources. After some investigation, we’ve found that our implementation of Single SignOn (NetID) last October, which uses the University’s WebAuth software, has had an unforeseen consequence. The definition of a “current student” in WebAuth is one who is enrolled in the current or a future semester, which means that students enrolled in Spring Semester do not have summer access until they enroll in a summer or fall course.

It turns out the solution is simple: most students can use Student Link–WebReg to register for Fall 2009 when it is available on the web: . No payment is required until the first day of class and it’s a fairly simple procedure on the web. Once registered, it may take about 2 business days for WebAuth to be updated and remote access to be restored.

Incoming students will be added to WebAuth when they’ve had their orientation and received their NetID. We anticipate that incoming medical students will have their access established in time for the start of the Bridge program on July 22.

Exceptions:

• We have been told that CoM-Phx students have their registrations processed by their admin staff, who are now aware of the access problems. Tara Cunningham, Director, CoM-Phx Academic Services, has indicated that registrations with be prioritized and processed this week.
• Registration (WebReg) — is shut down for several hours at a time during summer orientation to allow new students and their advisers to process their registrations. Students may have to wait until WebReg is available.

For questions, contact:
Joan Schlimgen

Again from the NY Times: Medicine and Twitter

Doctor and Patient

Medicine in the Age of Twitter

By PAULINE W. CHEN, M.D.

Published: June 11, 2009

I blog, I tweet and I use Facebook. And as I recently told a medical colleague, social media has been an enormously useful tool in my work.

“I can barely keep up with e-mail,” he snorted back. “I’m not about to open up that black box.”

About 15 years ago, during my residency and just as the first blogs were starting up, I took care of a patient in his mid-40s whom I’ll call Eddie. In a waiting room filled with elderly patients crippled by vascular disease, Eddie looked out of place. Until you looked closer at his fingers and toes. Parts of them had been amputated.

Eddie suffered from Buerger’s disease, or thromboangiitis obliterans, an illness that causes clotting and inflammation of the blood vessels of the hands and feet. Considered an “orphan” disease because of its relative rarity, Buerger’s disease compromises the blood supply to a patient’s fingers and toes. Eventually these patients, who are usually men in their 20s to 40s who smoke, develop excruciating pain, severe ulcerations and gangrene. And more often than not, they must undergo progressively higher amputations….

Minutes later I began to receive replies, including this one from @achronicdose:

Knowledge from patient-peers thru social media *can* mean more helpful talks w/ dr; dr. p.o.v. helpful for patients to read.

Doctor or patient, you are never alone in the twitterverse or blogosphere; there is always someone who is willing to offer some help or lend some support. It’s a world that I think might have made all the difference for a patient like Eddie.

Join the discussion on the Well blog, When Your Doctor Is on Twitter.

See entire article in the June 11 issue…http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/health/11chen.html

From the NY Times: Taking Time for the Self on the Path to Becoming a Doctor

By PAULINE W. CHEN, M.D.

Published: June 18, 2009

Over the next two weeks in hospitals and medical centers across the country, new medical school graduates will begin their internship. Among their many worries — moving to a new city, meeting new colleagues, adjusting to medical training — is a more profound, existential concern that had once plagued me.

Do I have to lose my self in order to become the doctor I want to be?

I learned the answer to that question partway through my internship. Not in the hospital but in the checkout line of a local grocery store.

The customer in front of me was an older woman — she wore a faux camel-hair coat and had hair dyed a matching color. I remember that she had wanted her groceries bagged in a particular fashion, but the sales clerk, a young woman with impossibly long pink acrylics, was perplexed by the woman’s demands.   Read entire article HERE.

Medical and Nursing Students’ Television Viewing Habits: Potential Implications for Bioethics

by Matthew Czarny, Edwin Bodensiek, Ruth R. Faden, Marie T. Nolan, Jeremy Sugarman
2008. The American Journal of Bioethics 8(12):1

Abstract/Extract
Television medical dramas frequently depict the practice of medicine and bioethical issues in a strikingly realistic but sometimes inaccurate fashion. Because these shows depict medicine so vividly and are so relevant to the career interests of medical and nursing students, they may affect these students’ beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions regarding the practice of medicine and bioethical issues. We conducted a web-based survey of medical and nursing students to determine the medical drama viewing habits and impressions of bioethical issues depicted in them. More than 80% of medical and nursing students watch television medical dramas. Students with more clinical experience tended to have impressions that were more negative than those of students without clinical experience. Furthermore, viewing of television medical dramas is a social event and many students discuss the bioethical issues they observe with friends and family. Television medical dramas may stimulate students to think about and discuss bioethical issues…Read entire article HERE. (on UA Campus only).

Germ Sleuths Stalk Origin of Killer Flu

from the Wall Street Journal…

by DAVID LUHNOW, JOSE DE CORDOBA and GAUTAM NAIK

MEXICO CITY — “I’ve got some bad news.”

The voice on the conference call last week was Frank Plummer, a Canadian scientist who had just spent 24 hours analyzing virus samples from 51 seriously ill people in Mexico.

The news: Seventeen people carried a completely new type of flu virus, one which had its origin in pigs. Flu from swine, which can be fatal, has rarely made the jump to humans — much less appeared in so many people at once. Within minutes, Mexico’s health minister grabbed a red-telephone hotline to President Felipe Calderón. “Mr. President, I need to see you urgently. It’s a matter of national security.”

A picture is now emerging of how U.S. and Mexican officials, with a key assist from a Canadian government lab, first realized they faced a new type of disease and began racing to isolate its earliest origins. Until recently, Mexico was widely assumed to be ground zero. Now, however, some California doctors are questioning that….

See post here

Dynamed offers free H1N1 Information

Due to the recent global outbreak of Swine Influenza, EBSCO Publishing and the DynaMed Editors have made the main elements of the DynaMed clinical summary for Swine Influenza free to health care providers and institutions throughout the world. The DynaMed topic on Swine Influenza consolidates information from multiple sources for health care providers to stay current with recommendations for monitoring, diagnosing, and treating patients with flu-like illnesses during this outbreak. DynaMed Editors will continue to monitor information and update this topic as needed throughout this global crisis.
DynaMed is a point-of-care reference resource designed to provide clinicians with the best available evidence to support clinical decision-making. DynaMed is part of the suite of medical products owned and provided by EBSCO Publishing and is updated daily by monitoring medical literature sources.

The link for this info is:  http://hldemo.ebscohost.com/DynaMed-SwineFlu/

Enviro-Health Links & MedlinePlus- Swine Flu–from the NIH

A broad-based portal to a variety of up to date information, see http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/enviro/swineflu.html#a2

MedlinePlus has also posted a topics page at:  http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/swineflu.html#skip

Institute of Medicine Calls for Doctors to Stop Taking Gifts From Drug Makers

By GARDINER HARRIS

Published: April 28, 2009

WASHINGTON — In a scolding report, the nation’s most influential medical advisory group said doctors should stop taking much of the money, gifts and free drug samples they routinely accept from drug and device companies.

Senators Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin and Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, are co-sponsors of a bill to require drug and device makers to disclose payments to doctors.

The report, by the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, is a stinging indictment of many of the most common means by which drug and device makers endear themselves to doctors, medical schools and hospitals.

“It is time for medical schools to end a number of long-accepted relationships and practices that create conflicts of interest, threaten the integrity of their missions and their reputations, and put public trust in jeopardy,” the report concluded.

The institute’s report is even more damning than a similar one released last year by the Association of American Medical Colleges, which proposed tough new rules governing interactions between companies and medical schools.

In the wake of the association’s report, many schools and medical societies toughened their policies. The institute’s imprimatur is certain to accelerate this process.

“With the I.O.M.’s endorsement, issues that were once controversial now are indisputable,” said Dr. David Rothman, president of the Institute on Medicine as a Profession at Columbia University. “Conflicts of interest in medicine are no longer acceptable.”…  read entire post at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/health/policy/29drug.html?_r=1&ref=us

HealthMap available to view global state of infectious disease

About HealthMap

HealthMap brings together disparate data sources to achieve a unified and comprehensive view of the current global state of infectious diseases and their effect on human and animal health. This freely available Web site integrates outbreak data of varying reliability, ranging from news sources (such as Google News) to curated personal accounts (such as ProMED) to validated official alerts (such as World Health Organization). Through an automated text processing system, the data is aggregated by disease and displayed by location for user-friendly access to the original alert. HealthMap provides a jumping-off point for real-time information on emerging infectious diseases and has particular interest for public health officials and international travelers. You can select diseases such as influenza, measles, rabies to get a visual representation of break-outs in the last 30 days.

To take a look, go to: http://healthmap.org/en

Administrative Professionals’ Health and Safety

from the CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/Features/AdminHealth/

April 22, 2009 was Administrative Professionals Day. Improve your health, and lower your risk for stress and strains while at work by following these tips.

Now, what IS this exactly??

Technology has changed how we work, and science has helped improve our health and safety at work. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2006, administrative professionals (secretaries and administrative assistants) held about 4.2 million jobs, making this one of the largest occupations in the U.S. economy. Administrative professionals often must sit for long periods of time and spend a lot of time at the computer or on the phone. Improve your health, and lower your risk for stress and strains while at work by following these tips for administrative professionals:

• Create a comfortable work space. Arrange your chair, desk, and items so that you can work comfortably without needing to overreach, sit or stand too long, or use awkward postures. Use a back or foot rest if needed.
• Take breaks. Stretch your legs, arms, and neck to recover from muscle fatigue.
• Manage stress. Early warning signs of stress include headache, sleep problems, difficulty concentrating, short temper, upset stomach, job dissatisfaction, and low morale. Take steps to recognize and manage stress.
• Be safe. Fatal and nonfatal violence does occur in the workplace. An average of 1.7 million people are victims of violent crime while working or on duty in the United States. Learn practical measures for identifying risk factors for violence at work, and take strategic action to help keep yourself safe.
• Eat healthy meals and snacks. Eat a variety of fruits and vegetables every day. Limit foods and drinks high in calories, sugar, salt, fat, and alcohol.
• Get physical activity. Be active for at least 2½ hours a week. Include activities that raise your breathing and heart rates and that strengthen your muscles.

More Information

• Administrative Professional Health and Safety Tips
• Office Environment and Worker Safety and Health