UpToDate® Anywhere is now available for all physicians in the province and for all staff in organizations funded by Manitoba Health.

Doctors Manitoba, Manitoba Health, the University of Manitoba, Regional Health Authorities, Diagnostic Services Manitoba (DSM), and CancerCare Manitoba worked together to establish and fund a provincial contract with Up to Date that provides health care providers in Manitoba with access to UpToDate through any desktop or mobile device. This is the first clinical decision support tool to be included in what will become a Manitoba “virtual health library” that aims to provide equitable access to information resources for all healthcare providers in the province.

UpToDate is an electronic Clinical Decision Support used by clinicians and non-clinicians in the delivery of healthcare. It includes more than 10,500 topics covering general internal medicine and more than 20 specialities; a select drug database and drug interaction tool (in partnership with Lexicomp®); more than 1,500 patient education topics; more than 28,000 graphics; links to more than 400,000 references; and a number of medical calculators.

What is included with UpToDate Anywhere?

•  Free UpToDate Mobile App for your iOS®, Android™, or Windows 8 device
  chosen as one of “The Best Apps in Publishing” by EContent Magazine
•  Easy access to UpToDate by logging in from any computer with an Internet connection
•  Free continuing education credit. This program meets the accreditation criteria of the College of Family Physicians of Canada and has been accredited for up to 0.5 CFPC Mainpro®-M1 Credits per Internet point-of-care learning cycle. You may earn up to 15 CFPC Mainpro®-M1 Credits per year for this category of electronic CME/CPD activity. Use of UpToDate may be recorded on the basis of .5 credits per activity in Section 2 (Scanning) of the Royal College Maintenance of Certification (MOC) Program. (CME/CE/CPD) may be earned when you research a clinical question using UpToDate onsite or remotely – including on your mobile device
• A bi-weekly clinical update with selected What’s New and Practice Changing UpDate notices

How do I access UpToDate? If you already have access today through an institutional subscription, your path for access will remain the same in addition to gaining some new features. If you do not yet have access to UpToDate, please contact the entity that best describes your affiliation listed below to learn more.

You will need your MHIKNET library card number and password.   Please contact us if you need to register for a library card or reset your password.

Click on the link that best describes your primary affiliation to learn more.

• Faculty, student or resident at University of Manitoba- http://umanitoba.ca/libraries/services/
• Affiliate of Winnipeg Regional Health Authority – http://libguides.lib.umanitoba.ca/wrha/uptodate.
• Affiliate of Prairie North Regional Health Authority- Use current access.
• Affiliate of Interlake Regional Health Authority- Use current access.
• Affiliate of Santé Sud Regional Health Authority- Use current access.
• Affiliate of Northern Regional Health Authority- Use current access.
• Affiliate of Cancer Care Manitoba- Access through your institutional intranet or network.
• Affiliate of Diagnostic Services Manitoba –  Access through your institutional intranet or network.
• Other Healthcare entity including private physician offices- http://mhiknet.lib.umanitoba.ca/Home

For more information on who is eligible, how to access UpToDate, how to create an account, etc. please visit our FAQ’s.

Questions:

• University of Manitoba http://umanitoba.ca/libraries/services/
• UpToDate:
  o If you are an affiliate of WRHA or University of Manitoba: Fell, Patrick Patrick.Fell@wolterskluwer.com.
  o All others contact : St-Francois, Christopher C.St-Francois@wolterskluwer.com
• UpToDate Customer Service via email Manitoba@Wolterskluwer.com using the subject line UpToDate Anywhere, or call +1-781-392-2000.

At today’s Continuing Professional Development program for physicians at the University of Manitoba’s Bannatyne campus, MHIKNET Library Services displayed books from the Neil John Maclean Health Sciences Library on the theme of Medical Care for Distinct Populations. Some titles included:

• Poverty, community, and health: Co-operation and the good society
• Introduction to aboriginal health and health care in Canada: Bridging health and healing
• Handbook of immigrant health
• The handbook of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender public health: A practitioner’s guide to service
• The social determinants of health in Manitoba (2015 edition)

A full list of titles is available here: CPD_distinct_populations_books_CF_04Dec2015.

Contact us to borrow these (or other) books at mhiknet@umanitoba.ca or 1-877-789-3804.

Carol Friesen, the MHIKNET Librarian for Manitoba Health, Healthy Living and Seniors, published an article in the first issue of Manitoba Libraries about a search filter she developed to narrow search results for literature searches in PubMed to high quality literature in the area of best practices. The search filter “provides consistency in searching for relevant literature and is included in focused search strategies that are used for ongoing alerts of current evidence-based literature”. Here is the search filter:

improv*[TI] OR evaluat*[TI] OR effectiv*[TI] OR “best practice”[TI] OR “best practices” OR cost*[TI] OR economic*[TI] OR Meta-Analysis[ptyp] OR Review[ptyp] OR systematic [sb] OR Comparative Study[ptyp] OR “Comparative Effectiveness Research”[Majr] OR Evaluation Studies[ptyp] OR “Benchmarking”[MAJR] OR “Cost-Benefit Analysis”[Mesh] OR “Practice Guideline”[Publication Type] OR “Practice Guidelines as Topic”[Mesh] OR “Quality Improvement”[Mesh] OR “technical report”[Publication Type]

After this search filter is combined with other search terms for an applicable literature search question in PubMed, the results are quality filtered to find the most relevant articles for the question. This search filter can also be used in ongoing Current Awareness alerts to keep current on specific topics in PubMed.

Find out more about Quality Filtering here.

Friesen C. Development of a best practices search filter in PubMed. Manitoba Libraries. 2014;1(1):24-26.

We have just discovered the website Choosing Wisely Canada and are interested to hear from you whether:
1. You have heard of this resource?
2. You have been using it?

From the About page on their website:

Choosing Wisely Canada is a campaign to help physicians and patients engage in conversations about unnecessary tests, treatments and procedures, and to help physicians and patients make smart and effective choices to ensure high-quality care.

Unnecessary tests, treatments and procedures do not add value to care. In fact, they take away from care by potentially exposing patients to harm, leading to more testing to investigate false positives and contributing to stress for patients. And of course unnecessary tests, treatments and procedures put increased strain on the resources of our health care system.

Canadian national specialty societies participating in the campaign, representing a broad spectrum of physicians, have been asked to develop lists of “Five Things Physicians and Patients Should Question.” These lists identify tests, treatments or procedures commonly used in each specialty, but are not supported by evidence, and/or could expose patients to unnecessary harm.

Choosing Wisely Canada is modeled after the Choosing Wisely® campaign in the United States, which was launched by the ABIM Foundation in April 2012.
Choosing Wisely Canada is organized by Dr. Wendy Levinson in partnership with the Canadian Medical Association.

Choosing Wisely Canada got underway initially in Ontario and has quickly been adopted by all provincial and territorial medical associations which have established or are in the process of establishing mechanisms to support the adoption of the Choosing Wisely Canada lists. It is now a truly national campaign in Canada and, in fact has spread to Australia, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Switzerland and elsewhere. Choosing Wisely Canada leads the international effort.
Choosing Wisely Canada recognizes the importance of educating and engaging patients so that they could make informed choices about their care. This campaign has created patient-friendly materials to help patients learn about the tests, treatments or procedures in question, when they are necessary and when they are not, and what patients can do to improve their health. Choosing Wisely Canada is working with various stakeholder groups to disseminate the patient materials widely.

Choosing Wisely Canada is also working with medical schools to introduce new content into the undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing medical education curricula.

Opportunities are currently being identified, through partnerships with various health care organizations and associations, to support implementation of the physician recommendations in practice settings. Choosing Wisely Canada has recently introduced an “Early Adopter Collaborative” to bring such groups together.

* The lists of “Five Things Physicians and Patients Should Question” are not intended to be used to establish payment and coverage decisions. Rather, they are meant to spur conversation about what is appropriate and necessary treatment. As each patient situation is unique, physicians and patients should use the Choosing Wisely Canada materials to determine an appropriate treatment plan together.

To celebrate National Nursing Week we wanted to highlight MHIKNET’s new Nursing Toolkit which features free evidence-based resources, guidelines, websites, and databases relevant to nurses and nursing.

If you have a favourite resources that you would like added to our toolkits, please let us know! We hope that our subject-specific toolkits will become your one-stop-shop for high quality resources!

We also have subject-specific toolkits on chronic diseases, dietetics, emergency medicine, family medicine, hypertension, mental health, pediatrics, and public health. If you have a topic that you would like us to create a toolkit for, please let us know!

March is Nutrition Month and the Dietitians of Canada have many amazing resources featured on their website to support this year’s campaign Eating 9 to 5!. Some of the resources include:

• Five print-ready fact sheets are available to help spread the campaign message.
• Eating 9 to 5! Videos are available on several topics, including how to kick start your day with breakfast and how to avoid an afternoon slump with better lunch choices.
• The Canada Activity Map showcases different activities ongoing this month from across the country.

Wednesday March 18, 2015 is Dietitians Day, which is a special day dedicated to all dietitians across Canada, celebrating dietitians as health care professionals who are committed to using their specialized knowledge and skills in food and nutrition to improve the health of Canadians.

We would love to hear from you about what your centre or region are doing for Nutrition Month! Email mhiknet@umanitoba.ca or Tweet us at @mhiknet.

Researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) have been investigating consumer health videos on YouTube.

You may be interested in their publication Too Many Crying Babies: A Systematic Review of Pain Management Practices During Immunizations on YouTube” where they noticed that infants were highly distressed during the immunization procedure and that known methods to reduce distress (such as breastfeeding, sweet solutions, or front-to-front holding) were not being utilized.

They also created YouTube videos:

• Baby Vaccination: The Secret to a Calm and Peaceful Immunization that demonstrates how painless and peaceful vaccinations can be.
• Be Sweet to Babies: Reduce your infant’s pain during newborn blood tests, which again demonstrate that through breastfeeding, sugar water, and skin-to-skin care, babies can have painless blood tests and procedures.

If you have had your MHIKNET library card for five years or more, you may be receiving a message from the University of Manitoba Library Systems saying that your account is set to expire. Don’t worry though, you are still eligible for service and we will happily renew your account for you.

Please contact us and we will renew your library account for another five years.

Being that it’s cold and flu season, and that we’re in the middle of a cold snap, we thought we’d share these new research results that suggest how the common cold is happier in a cold nose.

The research was conducted in the US and published in PNAS.

The BBC also wrote (an easier to read) article about this research and findings.

Will it make you pull your scarf up tightly around your nose? Or is the research too specific to generalize on a large scale?