The effect of providing a USB syllabus on resident reading of landmark articles

Background: The acquisition of new knowledge is a primary goal of residency training. Retrieving and retaining influential primary and secondary medical literature can be challenging for house officers. We set out to investigate the effect of a Universal Serial Bus (USB) drive loaded with landmark scientific articles on housestaff education in a pilot study. Methods: We created a USB syllabus that contains 187 primary scientific research articles. The electronic syllabus had links to the full-text articles and was organized using an html webpage with a table of contents according to medical subspecialties. We performed a prospective cohort study of 53 house officers in the internal medicine residency program who received the USB syllabus. We evaluated the impact of the USB syllabus on resident education with surveys at the beginning and conclusion of the nine-month study period. Results: All 50 respondents (100%) reported to have used the USB syllabus. The self-reported number of original articles read each month was higher at the end of the nine-month study period compared to baseline. Housestaff rated original articles as being a more valuable educational resource after the intervention. Conclusions: An electronic syllabus with landmark scientific articles placed on a USB drive was widely utilized by housestaff, increased the self-reported reading of original scientific articles and seemed to have positively influenced residents’ attitude toward original medical literature

Development of a clinical information tool for the electronic medical record: A case study

Question: What is the process of developing a clinical information tool to be embedded in the electronic health record of a very large and diverse academic medical center? &Setting: The development took place at the University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences Library System. &Method: The clinical information tool developed is a search box with subject tabs to provide quick access to designated full-text information resources. Each subject tab offers a federated search of a different pool of resources. Search results are organized ''on the fly'' into meaningful categories using clustering technology and are directly accessible from the results page. &Results: After more than a year of discussion and planning, a clinical information tool was embedded in the academic medical center's electronic health record. &Conclusion: The library successfully developed a clinical information tool, called Clinical-e, for use at the point of care. Future development will refine the tool and evaluate its impact and effectiveness