Welcome to the second Virtual Medical Library e-Newsletter. The purpose of this newsletter is to announce new resources added to the FSU Virtual Medical Library, to feature established online resources to acquaint students and faculty with these resources, mention a cool feature of some PDA resource, and remind everyone how to access our Library resources from off campus. The featured resources for this month are ACPMedicine and Antibiotic Guides on the PDA.
The newsletter on the web:
http://med.fsu.edu/library/LibraryHandout_00.html.
This newsletter in pdf:
http://med.fsu.edu/library/Newsletter200403/Newsletter200403.pdf
ACPMedicine. (formerly WebMD Scientific American Medicine): Reference and CME service in general internal medicine - comprehensive, continually updated.
Academic Emergency
Medicine.
- 1999-present available as full text
Health Affairs. - 1981-present available as full text
Click on image to go to site.
Please take a moment to explore two methods for using this continuously updated e-book. You may search by topic (see search on “dementia” in top left box) which locates specific book sections on the topic. Within sections of the book, one will find a number of charts, graphs and tables along with the text.
Click on image to go to site.
Another method for locating information is to browse the contents pages located in the left frame. You can drill down via layers of content to arrive at the specific section you seek.
Finding the most effective antibiotic for the bug you have in front of you (or growing on you, if that is the case) is easy with a PDA. The two drug references that we have available for faculty and students both do this, ePocrates and CPOnhand, but in different ways
eProcates Rx Pro has an ID (Infectious disease) guide included. It is under the little doctor’s bag tab. You can go three ways: by Bug, by Drug or by System. Which ever way you go, it will eventually lead you to a disease such as community acquired pneumonia, below. There, you can choose between inpatient and outpatient treatment, then choose empiric treatments, specific treatment, add your own notes and read other information, like guidelines and references for the recommendations.
While CPOnhand does not have a specific section devoted only to antibiotics, they cleverly include the ability to look up antibiotics and all drugs by indication. Under Drug Information you simply drop down the box where it says Generic and Brand Names, and select Indications/Dosage. Low and behold, there are all the bugs and diseases. Selecting pneumonia (there is no community acquired specifically) there are listed in alphabetical order every drug for which pneumonia is indicated. There is no distinction between inpatient or outpatient. This list might be more useful if it were somewhat shorter. Pick a drug, any drug. Then you must again go to indication/dosage and pick the disease to see the dosing recommendations.
There is one more option that is free to all physicians and medical students. That is the highly respected Johns Hopkins Antibiotic Guide. Found online at http://hopkins-abxguide.org, the PDA version is available for all Palm devices and for a few Pocket PC brands: the IPAC, Casio and HP. Unfortunately, it is not yet available for the Dell Axim or Toshiba, or for any PDA running the PocketPC 2003 operating system.