Wondersteen's Blog

Last day

wondersteen — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:23:04 +0000

Today is my last day at the Central Medical Library. Not totally, I will come back to give some workshops, three times in April and May, but still… Tomorrow I start at the Library of Social Science of the University of Groningen. I’m looking forward to it. I will work as an Information-/Collection-specialist Sociology. Some part of my work will be about repositories and copyright-matters. Relatively new subjects to me. Exiting!
About the future of this blog, I don’t know yet. If I continue the content will be different, that is obviously… We will see.

“Mobile” Firefox

wondersteen — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 09:04:54 +0000

Last Monday, during a staff-meeting of the department Orthopedics, I did a demo on what our library can do for them. Because of the policy of the ICT-department of the hospital I wasn’t allowed to download our Library Toolbar on the computer. I wasn’t allowed to download Firefox on the computer either. I had no rights to install anything at all!
But I had a very bright moment! Luckly I had my USB-stick with me. I installed Firefox on my USB-stick, so I could use firefox and install the Toolbar on Firefox. It was now possible to demonstrate our Toolbar! I had never tried it before. Only later I heard of a mobile version of Firefox. Downloading the “normal” version worked well.

Netvibes Public Pages

wondersteen — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:55:47 +0000

This morning I’ve been busy moving all tabs from my Netvibes Personal Page to another account. This proved to be a little bit frustrating because Netvibes crashed several times.
All the effort was necessary because of the need to transfer the “ownership” of EduCMB, my public page, to a collegue. I’ve found out the hard way that it is wise to use a different account for your personal page. I recommend that now to everybody who is making a Public Page for his or her department!

Differences in RSS-feeds

wondersteen — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 09:48:16 +0000

In an earlier post I wrote on PubMed-RSS-feeds that did not work well in Netvibes. I’ve looked for feeds for the same journals in the Terkko Feed Navigator and found most of them there. To my big surprise the content of the feeds for the same journal was sometimes different. For some journals, for example “Human Reproduction”, the feed by PubMed contained more recent articles than the feed by Terkko. For other journals, for example “Fertility and Sterility” it was the other way around.
And sometimes (but this was rare) the feed contained articles of the same date but they were different articles (from the same journal).

I will look into other feeds for the same journals and I’m curious what those will produce. To be continued….

Netvibes for Nursing

wondersteen — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:07:37 +0000

Last weeks I’ve been editing the Netvibes Universe EduCMB. Renewed, deleted and add some links, widgets etc. It is now mostly a Universe for nurses (in education or not) to find relevant literature. Unlucky for them most online stuff for nurses is in English. But online information for them in Dutch is more and more available. Last week I gave a hands-on session in searching for literature to nurses trained in diabetic nursing. Starting point was the EduCMB-site. Their coordinator was very enthusiastic about the Universe and gave some suggestions of sources to add to the Page. It was nice to cooperate with him. He is now promoting EduCMB at the Nursing Education Department.

Day two

wondersteen — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 18:36:12 +0000

Another morning full of presentations. Again it was a lot of talking and a lot of information. I can recommend to keep an eye on the website for the presentations to become online. Here some highlights.
After the openening presentation Jolita Bekhof talked about the weekly EBM-seminar at the department of Pediatrics of the Isala Clinic in Zwolle, the Netherlands. They have almost the same organization for this seminar as at the department of internal medicine (of the same hospital) which I visited once a month ago. Every week there’s is a Pico formulated and the CAT is presented 1-3 weeks later. At the department of Pediatrics one in 5 CATs resulted in change of daily clinical practice.
A nice, interactive and inspiring presentation was from Neal Maskrey of the National Prescribing Center in Liverpool, UK. Why is it so difficult to Get Research In Practice (GRIP)? Why has the young science of Evidence Based Medicine been most succesful in devising detailed methodologies for appraising research and least succesful at changing clinical practice practice to mirror the evidence? Cognitive psychology can come to help in explaining. Doctors are human beings. Human beings make decisions after brief reading and talking with others. So be careful on what you read and with whom you talking! Maskrey named a book, I certainly want to read: ‘Irrationality’ from Stuart Sutherland

First day

wondersteen — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 08:56:48 +0000

Yesterday, after the opening presentation of Paul Glasziou, many presentations followed. One of the speakers was Nina Rydland Olsen from the Centre for Evidence Based Practice, Faculty of Health and Science, Bergen University College in Norway. She talked about Evidence-Based Practice in clinical education. EBP knowledge and skills are teached in academic settings but are not necessarily adequately reinforced during clinical education. Nina Rydland Olsen did a study on experiences, beliefs and attitudes related to use of EBP in clinical education among physiotherapy students, their clinical instructors and teachers. Her conclusions: There is a positive attitude to EBP but there are also obstacles to use it in clinical settings. EBP is found to be demanding. There is a lack of time, lack of computers, lack of background knowledge. Searching and Critical Appraisal is encountered as difficult.
And last but not least: Good role models are missed in clinical education.
This last remark was heard througout the day: Role models are needed.
But also the clinicians present at the conference, who see the need of EBM, find it hard to find or take the time for EBM in the clinic itself.

And more and more presentations. There was Andrew Booth talking on the use of News Items in teaching of critical appraisal. Very inspiring and very fast as most of the presentations. Most presentations were 10 minutes and following each other immediately. So I can’t wait till the presentations are online to see some of them again.
The last (and longer) presentation was from Professor Kevin Mackway-Jones. He didn’t talk about EBM but about Best BETs (Best Evidence Topics) and how it was implemented on his department (emergency department). He emphasized the importance of taking a clinical scenario as a starting point, something nearby. Then people will get interested and see the use of EBM or Best BETs. A nice, inspiring presentation full of humour.

Past, present and future of EBM

wondersteen — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 07:55:17 +0000

Professor Paul Glasziou did the opening presentation on the Teachers & Developers of Evidence-Based Healthcare Conference. He gave a short history of EBM. Talked about the present. EBM is spreading we saw on a map of the world, but unevenly. He gave us some statistics on the impact of searching on correctness of answers to clinincal questions. On right answers changing to wrong after searching, wrong to right, right to right and wrong to wrong. Some numbers were quite shocking, but mostly due to inexperience.
EBM is covered on most UK medical schools. But practiced and assessed a lot lesser. And that was a main thread through the day.
Glasziou referred to the Sicily statement on evidence-based curriculum.
About the future: EBM is evolving. It needs refining the rules of evidence. Some immediatie & dramatic effects don’t need RCTs. It needs increasing attention on the “leaks” from research to practice.
He called up to come to the Sicily International EBM Meeting. It’s happening every two year and the next is in November 2009.
At the end of his presentation he named the website Nettingtheevidence: links to all kind of evidence-based stuff.

Today’s programme

wondersteen — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 07:55:32 +0000

After some starting problems my laptop is now working and has internetaccess.
It’s a hour earlier here in Oxford than at home. I’m not used to it already so I had an early wake up: 5 am!
I’m looking forward to the ‘Teachers & Developers of Evidence-Based Healthcae Conference’.
There will be presentations of: Professor Paul Glasziou, Andrew Booth, Christopher Cates, Melanie Barwick, Nina Rydland Olsen, Grant Dex, Kevork Hopayian, Colin Jones, Fiona Bath-Hextall, Paul Stevenson, S. Thangaratinam and Professor Kevin Mackway-Jones. That’s only for today!

‘Phantom libraries’

wondersteen — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 07:41:27 +0000

Read in the Mail on Sunday of december the 7th:
“A council opened three “phantom libraries” tot try to convince inspectors it was meeting Government targets on increasing residents’ access to books.
Lambeth Council in South London set up makeshift libraries in two youth centres and a housing office in a scheme costing 62,000 pound. They were then closed just six weeks later – and only 25 books were loaned.
… The council denies any wrong-doing.”
62,000 pound and 25 books loaned. I hope the readers did like those books!