Competency 9: Internet

Using Google, I found the United States National Institutes of Health National Library of Medicines website. It provides information about and links to information that is of concern to healthcare professionals (genetics, environmental health and toxicology, grants and funding, PubMed, Medline Plus, ToxTown, etc.), the public, researchers, librarians, and publishers.

The website also has webpages dedicated to resources for medical librarians and libraries. I particularly found the Health Services Research Methodology Core Library Recommendations 2007 webpage to be useful for medical librarians. This webpages provides information on core and desired medically-related databases, core and desired health services research methods websites, core and desired books in health services research methods, core journals in health research methods, etc.

I chose this website because it seems especially useful for medical librarians to know about this site since it helps them to expand their knowledge of online and offline resources that are available to assist the librarian in their efforts to find information for their healthcare practitioner clients.

Competency 8: Research Visual/Multimedia

Understanding evidence-based medicine is considered to be important for physician assistants according to research. On a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the highest value, evidence-based medicine was rated 4.5/5, which places it in first place. The ability to search databases, including Medline, was rated second at 4.4/6 with critique of research studies rated third at 4.3/5.

Since my topic is ebm, I selected this image because it demonstrates the importance of evidence-based medicine in the training curriculum of physician assistants, which demonstrates the increasing importance that ebm plays in medicine. Therefore, it is necessary for the healthcare practitioners to understand what ebm is and to learn about it during their training.

Copyright Information: Hegmann, T., & Dehn, R. (2004). Models of Research Instruction in Physician Assistant Education. Retrieved October 22, 2008, from http://www.paeaonline.org/ResearchInstitute/ABS_PAPERS_04/Hegmann_files/frame.htm.

Competency 7: Image

I found this image by searching evidence-based medicine on Google Images.

I chose this image because I think it demonstrates the best of the images that I found what ebm is about and allows for easy understanding of the ebm concept. This image comes from Florida State University's webpage tutorial on evidence-based medicine (ebm).

According to Sackett et al., ebm is a systemic approach to solving clinical problems that integrates patient values and expectations with individual clinical expertise and the best research-based evidence available. (Sackett DL, Strauss SE, Richardson WS, et al.(2002). Evidence-based medicine: how to practice and teach EBM. London: Churchill-Livingstone).