The Medical Library Association’s educational webcast, “Partnering to Prevent Diagnostic Error: Librarians on the Inside Track,” held on March 13, 2013, was a success!

The National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Pacific Southwest Region (NN/LM PSR), sponsored nine (9) regional sites for the broadcast of MLA’s Educational Webcast. There were a total of 97 people who viewed the webcast. Read more »

by Sunny Sritongsook, MLIS, AHIP
Medical Librarian
Scripps Mercy Hospital
San Diego, CA

Health care reform has repurposed health care in the US, and hospital leaders have been strategizing ways to continually improve processes for increased quality of care, while reducing medical errors and redundancy in the system. On the whole, it’s not an easy task to undertake, but utilizing knowledge management (KM) fits squarely with the design for immediate change in a complex environment. Read more »

by Frances Chu, MLIS, RN/NP
Associate Director of Reference & Outreach, Pumerantz Library
Western University of Health Sciences
Pomona, CA

On March 1, 2013, I attended the workshop Diagnostic Error: A Multidisciplinary Exploration, at Long Beach Memorial/Miller Children’s Hospital, with instructors Mark Graber, MD, Barb Jones, and Lorri Zipperer. The workshop focused on how clinicians make diagnostic errors and how librarians can be involved in a multidisciplinary team to address the issue of diagnostic error. Of interest to me, as a librarian and previously a clinician, were the studies about how clinicians think and make decisions, and how that can lead to diagnostic errors. Read more »

Introduction
The National Library of Medicine (NLM) has a long, respected history of providing resources for health professionals, scientists, and researchers, but it may come as a surprise that it also offers quality, unique materials for K-12 science educators. NLM’s Specialized Information Services (SIS) division is working diligently towards creating resources that are fully vetted and tied to national education standards. A recent webinar presented to NN/LM staff by Andrew Plumer of SIS highlighted numerous resources that include lesson plans for middle and high school students. These freely available educator resources help students make the connection between scientific concepts and community health, environmental quality, natural and human-caused hazards, and other issues. While these resources are geared towards educators, school and public librarians will also benefit from knowing the breadth and depth of what is available. Read more »

PSR was invited to participate at the California School Nurses Organization Conference in early February in San Diego. Kay Deeney taught an extensive workshop focusing on MedlinePlus and other NLM resources. She covered the NLM Drug Portal, the Pillbox, DailyMed and Genetics Home Reference. Topics on evaluating health websites and writing easy to read materials were also covered. The school nurses who attended appreciated learning about these resources. Read more »

As the RML for the Pacific Southwest Region, we receive a variety of interesting document delivery questions on a daily basis from our network members. We thought we’d share some of the questions we have received for the past few months and the answers we provided, in case others have been impacted. Read more »

by Connie Schardt
Associate Director for Research & Education
Medical Center Library
Duke University

Evidence-Based Practice is all about information management for providing quality patient care. Understanding the principles and concepts behind Evidence-Based Practice can help us enhance the services and resources we provide to our health care workers. There are lots of ways to do this within the constraints of budgets and staffing. Read more »

The Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC) and Asian Law Caucus (ALC) have released a new report on California’s fastest growing racial groups: A Community of Contrasts: Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders in California, 2013. The report presents the latest data on Asian American and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) population, population growth, and key social and economic characteristics; such as income, poverty, education, and language. Key findings include: Read more »

We would like to recognize the following network members by highlighting their accomplishments, promotions, awards, new positions and departures. We welcome your submissions for possible future announcements! Read more »

In December, we sent a message about the use of the LinkOut statistics function in the Library Submission Utility, to assess whether any of our network members were using certain options for statistics. I received feedback from about one dozen people. Here is some further information for you. Read more »