Friday, February 28, 2014

Harry Potter's World Family Day @ the Pumerantz Library

Share the magic with the family! On Saturday,  March 29, 2014 from 1pm to 4 pm the Pumerantz Library staff will be celebrating Harry Potter's world with a special family fun day.

On this one day the family of WesternU faculty, students and staff are invited to; decorate a wand, discover medicinal plants, create an origami snitch and more.
We will also have as a special guest Boo, a barn owl, from Wild Wings of California.

For more information on the Family Fun Day or the Harry Potter's World Renaissance Science, Magic, and Medicine exhibit please contact the Pumerantz Library toll free at 1-888-704-16601-888-704-1660. Harry Potter's World exhibit is brought provided by the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health - Curated by Elizabeth J. Bland.



Friday, February 14, 2014

Study Like It’s 1864


John Wood, 1825-1891 Giving a Lecture
Recently, I stumbled across an 1864 article from the British Medical Journal by Dr. P. M. Latham called “A Word or Two on Medical Education: And a Hint or Two for those who Think it Needs Reforming.”  I was curious to see how much medical education had changed in 150 years. The answer: not as much as you would think. We no longer try to cure pneumonia by bleeding or brandy (Latham, 1864, p. 143)—thank goodness for antibiotics!—but many educational methods are still startlingly similar.

What has changed:

An increased emphasis on clinical education. Dr. Latham recounts how two graduating, award-winning medical students approached him and asked how they could learn their profession. “During three whole years they had been hard at work upon all that lectures and museums could teach them. […] But they had utterly neglected the wards of the hospital. This was their own honest confession and regret” (1864, p. 141). Fortunately, clinical competence is now a key part of the curriculum.

No prizes for going to class. It seems there used to be a broader range of class choices and incentives. Dr. Latham lists a wide range of scientific topics and notes, “On most of these subjects, it is not thought enough to specify the number of lectures to be attended: prizes are given annually to stimulate competition, and are given to the most proficient in all of them” (1864, p. 142). For better or worse, the curriculum is now more structured, and awards are fewer and farther between.

What hasn’t changed:

Lecture format. Today’s students may laugh at old medical universities, with “the ruinous amount of taxation they levied upon the time and thought of medical students, with their hundreds and hundreds of lectures sentenced and inflicted upon them without mercy” (Latham, 1864, p. 141). But it is a bitter laugh.

Overwhelming amount of information. No one ever said medical school would be easy, with “lectures on Anatomy, not by few, but by hundreds; lectures on the Principles and Practice of Medicine … Principles and Practice of Surgery … Forensic Medicine, including Toxicology and Toxicological Analysis … Materia Medica … Chemistry … Botany … Physiology …” (Latham, 1864, 142). To say nothing, of course, of interprofessional education.

Theory before practice. Latham argues that, just as people do not learn to read by learning the philosophy and history of reading, medical students should learn the practical aspects of their calling before hearing lectures, so they can “exercise some judgment upon the subject matter” (1864, 143). Even now, this notion sounds radical. What would happen if this suggestion were taken? Students would almost certainly make more mistakes… and maybe learn from them.

What aspects of medical education do you think should change? Put in your “word or two” in the comment box.

~Kelli Hines, MLIS
  Scholarly Communication Librarian

Picture -  John Wood FCRS 1825-1891 Giving a lecture, Oil Painting by Henry J. Brooks 1888 - Wellcome Library, London

Thursday, February 13, 2014

AccessMedicine AccessPharmacy Case Files




AccessMedicine and AccessPharmacy are more than just ebooks.  They also have growing sections on case files and self-assessment.

In AccessMedicine you can access case files on basic science and clinical medicine based on the popular Case Files book series.  If you are looking for  Pathophysiology Cases they are derived from the book Pathophysiology of Disease by McPhee and Hammer.  The Hurst’s Imaging Cases are based on the book Hurst’s The Heart.  For self-assessment, you can select content from either the Clinical Library or the Lange Educational Library. 

In AccessPharmacy you can also access cases based on the Case Files book series and the based on Pathophysiology of Disease.  In addition they have Pharmacotherapy Casebook and Care Plans taken from the book Pharmacotherapy Casebook: A Patient-Focused Approach and Virtual Cases on various topics.  In the self-assessment section you can create custom tests by resource, using the NAPLEX Review books, taking the Top 200 Drugs Challenge, or taking a Quick Test. 
Pathophysiology Cases.

You will have to create a free account to access the self-assessment questions in AccessMedicine or AccessPharmacy.  Your account will work for both databases.

If you have any questions please contact the reference and outreach librarians at 909-469-5323, toll free at 1-888-704-1660 or by email at reference@westernu.edu

Friday, February 7, 2014

Dr. Vicki Wedel Book Signing

The Pumerantz Library is proud to sponsor a talk and book signing of Dr. Wedel's new book Broken Bones: Anthropological analysis of blunt force trauma.

The talk that precedes the book signing is titled "Bones, Ballistics, and Blunt Force Trauma: Forensic skeletal evidence of the difference".

After the talk copies of the book will be available for sale and signing by Dr. Wedel. Broken Bones is currently available at the WesternU Bookstore for 10% off the cover price of $64.95. It is also available on Amazon for $61.45 and Dr. Wedel will have a limited number of copies available at the talk for 20% off the cover price, $52.00, for cash only.

Please join us on March 13, 2014 in Classroom A of the Health Education Center (HEC) from 4 - 6 pm. Please call the library at 909-469-5323 or toll free at 1-888-704-1660 for more details.

DDx Resources Recording

Differential diagnosis resources were presented in an online library workshop on February 4, 2014. A link to the recording can be found here. You can also view the library's other recorded workshops here.

The resources covered were

5 minute clinical consult is searchable by systems and alphabetically by disease and by condition.






Diagnosuarus is reachable through AccessMedicine and can be searched by symptom, disease or organ system.






VisualDx is a dermatological, ocular, dental differential diagnosis generator that you can create a DDx by using the differential builder or look up the disease state.


DiagnosisPro is a free online DDx generator that uses key findings to create a differential.