[Clinical epidemiology: from the view points of science and ethics].
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The 21st century is marked by advances in medical science and the rise of the 'information society'. It is possible to identify and systematize the intersections between both of these areas and point out a matrix of access to medical information from a legal perspective. There are four connecting levels: (1) informed consent; (2) medical histories; (3) healthcare administrative information; and (4) information on the impact of environmental factors such as food and nutrition or contamination on health. This four-way scenario acquires new importance with the generalization of the information society and the advances in biomedicine. Globalization is challenged by the 'here and now' mentioned before. The large number of medical data and their new uses and consequences is a subject requiring an interdisciplinary approach that emerges from ethics as much as from science.
The overabundance of information resources, and the inadequacy of current information retrieval methods, are considered with special reference to the scholarly record of the health sciences. Both formal and informal means for finding information, and for keeping abreast of new knowledge, are reviewed, with practical suggestions for lightening the load. Continuing educators are seen as having a special role in this process.
The use of information resources by health professionals and their information seeking behavior are reviewed from a wide range of existing literature. The influence of several variables such as form of practice, engagement in research and educational programs, professional age, locus of practice, accessibility, specialty and departmental affiliation on the use of sources as identified by various studies are highlighted. Some of the serious problems that limit the free flow of health information in general, with special reference to those encountered in the developing world; the problems of modern medical education and how these relate to information dynamics in the sciences are highlighted. Generalizable statements with short explanatory notes are made about the use of information resources by health professionals, based on the review.
This paper describes how Montana librarians successfully incorporated health sciences libraries into the statewide health care resource management plan being developed under 1993 state law. First, a broad-based Montana Task Force for Biomedical Information was formed with funds from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine/Pacific Northwest Region and the Montana Area Health Education Center. The resulting report reviewed findings from national studies and trends to current state developments and deficiencies. The report was presented to the governor and state legislators in the context of cost-containment measures being considered in the state's health care reform bill. Now Montana law provides that "it is further the policy of the state of Montana that the health care system should ... facilitate universal access to current health sciences information," and "The management plan must include ... identification of the current supply and distribution of ... health sciences library resources and services." This experience highlights the need for health sciences librarians to develop skills in advocacy, lobbying, and networking with other components of the health care industry.
The need for data of professional interventions in public health in general and in nursing in particular has risen sharply over the last years. When it comes to the development and the use of respective measuring instruments, their scientific foundation is normally called into question. The article deals with this problem using as an example the LEP method. The focus lies on questions of methodology and philosophy of science rather than questions concerning the sociology of organization, profession or knowledge. At first the basic problem of measurement in social sciences is outlined using the distinction of first and second order measurements. Then we introduce the construction process of LEP and show, in which way it links the two levels of measurement. In the following paragraphs questions of validity and reliability are addressed as well as the decision to use time as a yardstick. We then show that LEP is not a measuring method to test scientific hypotheses but a valid instrument constructed with the help of social sciences that instructs management decisions. As an information system it combines elements of science, practice and bureaucracy and integrates them at the same time. As a boundary object it provides the basis for a constructive dialogue between the various stakeholder groups.
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OBJECTIVES: This research was conducted to provide new insights on clinical nurses' and nursing students' current use of health resources and libraries and deterrents to their retrieval of electronic clinical information, exploring implications from these findings for health sciences librarians. METHODS: Questionnaires, interviews, and observations were used to collect data from twenty-five nursing students and twenty-five clinical nurses. RESULTS: Nursing students and clinical nurses were most likely to rely on colleagues and books for medical information, while other resources they frequently cited included personal digital assistants, electronic journals and books, and drug representatives. Significantly more nursing students than clinical nurses used online databases, including CINAHL and PubMed, to locate health information, and nursing students were more likely than clinical nurses to report performing a database search at least one to five times a week. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: Nursing students made more use of all available resources and were better trained than clinical nurses, but both groups lacked database-searching skills. Participants were eager for more patient care information, more database training, and better computer skills; therefore, health sciences librarians have the opportunity to meet the nurses' information needs and improve nurses' clinical information-seeking behavior.
The Department of Defense (DoD) undertook a major systems specification, acquisition, and implementation project of multivendor picture archiving and communications system (PACS) and teleradiology systems during 1997 with deployment of the first systems in 1998. These systems differ from their DoD predecessor system in being multivendor in origin, specifying adherence to the developing Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) 3.0 standard and all of its service classes, emphasizing open architecture, using personal computer (PC) and web-based image viewing access, having radiologic telepresence over large geographic areas as a primary focus of implementation, and requiring bidirectional interfacing with the DoD hospital information system (HIS). The benefits and advantages to the military health-care system accrue through the enabling of a seamless implementation of a virtual radiology operational environment throughout this vast healthcare organization providing efficient general and subspecialty radiologic interpretive and consultative services for our medical beneficiaries to any healthcare provider, anywhere and at any time of the night or day.
The paper describes the Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network's (EMAN) operational and program response to certain challenges of environmental monitoring in Canada, in particular, efforts to improve the ability of the network to deliver relevant information to decision makers. In addition to its familiar roles, environmental monitoring should deliver feedback to society on environmental changes associated with development patterns, trends, processes and interventions. In order for such feedback to be effective, it must be relevant, timely, useful and accessible: all characteristics that are defined by the user, not the provider. Demand driven environmental monitoring is explored through EMAN's experiences with Canada's Biosphere Reserves, the NatureWatch Program and the Canadian Community Monitoring Network.
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This statement summarizes the key points of discussion among a group of nutritional epidemiologists who met in Washington, DC, for 2 d in October of 1997 to reflect on the role of nutritional epidemiology in the development of dietary recommendations for the public. Although imprecision in the measurement of diet places limits on nutritional epidemiology, no other field of nutritional science can provide direct information on relations between nutrition and health in free-living human populations. Among the nutritional sciences, therefore, epidemiology was regarded as being critically important. Nutritional epidemiology can be improved in the future by the development of more precise measures of long-term dietary exposures, both by improved methods of self-reporting of diet and by the development of more useful biomarkers of long-term nutritional status. There is a need as well to reconsider the applicability of causal criteria as applied to nutritional epidemiology, because many of the important associations between dietary behaviors and chronic diseases cannot necessarily be expected to be either strong or to manifest linear dose-response relations. In the future, scientific evidence from the rapidly growing field of nutritional epidemiology will likely play an increasingly important role in developing nutrition policy and advice for the public.
Until recently, most medical educators emphasized the art of medical education and largely ignored the fundamental science of learning underlying their basic practices. However, over the last decade medical education has evolved into an academic discipline in its own right, where scholarship can be demonstrated in the generation of new knowledge or the development of more efficient or effective strategies for transferring knowledge to others. It is essential that all medical educators familiarize themselves with the fundamental literature of the learning sciences and build upon it as it applies to their individual practices as medical teachers. Recent developments in the discipline of medical education and their implications for teaching will be the focus of this year's Ideas for Medical Education column. As associate editor for 1999, the author of this paper describes the problems associated with mastering the scientific underpinnings of medical education and outlines the kinds of questions that will be addressed in the Ideas feature throughout the year.
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Chemistry, molecular biology and biology have turned into visive sciences in which ideas and information are communicated by artistic impressions and cartoons. These sciences have, in fact, become dominated by what we term the Pictographic molecular paradigm under which reality is acritically approximated by drawings of some kind. But it goes further than this and has both social and philosophical implications of which, we feel, there is insufficient general awareness. Important questions should be asked in connection with this way of doing science, including, for example, as to whether drawings of chemical formulae and graphical representation in biology meet the criterion of objectivity. This paper discusses some of the implications of the pictographic molecular paradigm and its limits and dangers.