A session on building a program for life long learning for Scientific Overviews in Epidemiology, Master of Public Health Program, University of Toronto. April 2010
-Goal ‘maintain current awareness in my field’ is WAY too broad, needs some parameters. -Could be something concrete like “read everything by my supervisor” or something like “stay current with three top journals in the field” -gaps “ you don’t know what you don’t know ”, but could come across questions or read in the lit something you are unfamiliar with. ‘managing IP team’
Write them down! Couple of minutes
Activities to match your goals. Pull vs. Push You go to them vs. them coming to you. Favourites = find out while at U of T, talk to colleagues/professors
Turn Goals into activity
Can be once per day, once per week, in the morning when you get to work, or Sunday evening with a glass of wine. Don’t just skim and delete Daily emails is temporary, you will fall behind
After 1 month critically evaluate success of goals and activities. Are you actively checking your feed reader or do you need email to come to you? Are your emails being deleted without being red due to volume?
Back to the activity part of Current Awareness. One method is by capturing RSS feeds in a feed reader. How many are familiar with RSS? 3 min video. Watch video only if people are not sure about RSS
All you need is a google account
Sign up separately
Easy to use or you won’t use it!
Add feeds for grey lit as well as professional journals
You can also add feeds for blogs. You may wish to create folders in your feed reader separating out the blog from the journals, from the personal interest content.
In databases like Pubmed or Pubget. Or U of T subscribed databases. No RSS feeds in Google Scholar, Bing, or Scirus
Use Clinical Queries for Evidence-based searching. Use reg. Pubmed for everything.
Demo RSS feed: add to your feed reader, Saved Search, sign up for my NCBI. Email alerts. Pros and cons of both.
NOT Patient Smith, unless that case is a particularly meaningful one. Not by date either.
NCBI email alerts feature for saved searches…
New tool, links you up with PDFs or at the very least article summaries. Video on the site for those who are interested.
Demo with gmail account Another automated option is BMJ Updates - a product of the Health Information Research Unit at McMaster. Here you can search for articles on a topic, or register for e-mail pushes on your specialty. Physicians who are in general practice or primary care, internal medicine or its subspecialties are invited to register their interests so that they can receive email alerts and searching access for literature that is matched to their personal clinical interests.
General specialty areas, not a search like Pubmed. You can change the frequency so you get them daily, every few days, or weekly. The contents are systematically screened for both relevance and newsworthiness and you can specify what level of each you’re interested in.
Newsworthiness– can be less ‘newsworthy’ as you are starting out, need to be more newsworthy as you become an expert in your field.
Sample email alert
Example of what it looks like
Use each journal’s site or TicTOCs: Add your favourite journals to one site, check for all TOCs. Just another option.
Big FIVE medicine journals as well
If it’s a top journal, this does not apply. If it is a website, it does. Relevance: one goal might be management of an IP team, may not be covered by a PH journal. Find a management journal instead.
Scam ads– if a source you perceive as reliable has shady advertising or pop-ups, don’t hesitate to contact them. May be willing to remove offending ads.
Patients also face problems around critical evaluation of sources My favorite site: medline plus. From the states BUT there isn’t a great canadian alternative, unfortunately -Check with your local public library for recommendations. Upon starting in a community, one of the first things you should do.