By George Krikorian, Dana Medical Library

Need the latest on psychological tests, measures, scales, surveys and other assessments? The new PsycTESTS database, powered by EBSCO, provides all of this information and more, from test development to administration in one repository from the American Psychological Association (APA).

This database is comprehensive and organized, allowing users to access thousands of test instruments and records worldwide through a number of different search features. While the main focus of the database is on unpublished, research-only tests, the information available through PsycTESTS also spans over a century of detailed records, and provides links to many commercial tests that are available for purchase.

Detailed information is updated monthly, and provides information concerning:

• Test summaries and histories
• Reliability and validity data
• Test formats
• Peer-review citations from sources such as the APA and Hogrefe Publishing Group

PsycTESTS is a useful resource for studies in psychiatry, education, medicine, business, social work, and beyond. It offers a range of subject areas such as:

• Developmental measures
• Racial and ethnic identity scales
• Physical health assessments
• Intelligence tests
• Military tests

All information and test instruments are available over a number of multilingual formats. Textual information is printable in PDF formats, and occasionally includes elements of multi-media.

Be aware that most of the coverage (74%) is from 1990 or later, and that some tests may require permission from the author and/or publisher before they may be accessed for use.

If you need any assistance with this resource or others, do not hesitate to contact the reference desk at 802-656-2201.

By Fred Pond, MLS

Are you looking for low-cost, convenient ways to earn continuing medical education credit (CME)? Try Dana’s resource-rich list of databases and websites. This list offers access to a variety of clinical and medical education resources, and in some instances, CME credit may be obtained without costly out-of-town travel and fees.

Up-To-Date

Check out the popular UpToDate point-of-care database featuring quick access to current medical practices and recommendations. In fact, as you search for answers to patient care questions, UpToDate saves the topics for a later review, and offers continuing education credit by submitting the results to the appropriate accrediting organization.

Those organizations include American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Nurse Practitioners, and American Academy of Physician Assistants, among others.

Activating UpToDate for Continuing Education Credit

• Visit Dana Medical Library Home page, clicking on Articles & Databases under the FIND column.
• Click on “UpToDate with CME” selection under the Clinical Databases section.
• At the prompt, enter your UVM netID and password. At that point register with UpToDate, indicating the type of continuing education you desire (MD/DO, Nurse Practitioner, Physician Assistants, etc).

UpToDate will keep track of the appropriate continuing education process for your professional role. Periodically, you will need to submit the accumulated credit to your professional organization.

Natural Standard

The Natural Standard database offers trustworthy information on complementary and alternative therapies, diets, exercise and nutrition. Natural Standard aggregates from PubMed, CancerLit, the Cochrane database and other trusted databases of the health sciences professional literature to create monographs and systematic reviews of supplements, vitamins and minerals, foods, and diets. At the heart of Natural Standard lies evidence-based systematic reviews, that both inform patient care and provide the content for a growing number of CE/CME topics. Providers can earn credit by reading this topics and then completing a brief quiz.

Natural Standard may not be as popular or as well known as UpToDate, but it offers an Evidence-Based Grading system that applies scientific evidence to alternative therapies. The World Health Organization has named Natural Standard “the best and most authoritative web site available on herbal medicines.”

Mobile App for Natural Standard

Natural Standard is also available as a Mobile app via Skyscape, a smartphone application offering a broad array of health-oriented applications, including DynaMed, RX Drugs, and several other health sciences applications. See below for instructions to receive Natural Standard on your smartphone, making it even easier to receive CME credit while you use your mobile device to answer patient care questions.

CME from the Journal Literature

Simply keeping current by reading professional journal articles can result in CME credit, and Dana Medical Library subscribes to thousands of journals online.  Journals including JAMA, BMJ, and Pediatrics require a quick registration for access to their CME resources.

According to the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), a journal-based CME activity must include reading the article, completing a learner-directed activity offered by the provider, and answering a pre-determined set of questions or completing tasks relating to the content of the article.

In this brief article, we’ve focused on just a few trustworthy, Dana Medical Library licensed resources that offer continuing education via the web. Call or email the Reference Desk at 656-2201 for more information on other reliable sources.

Congratulations to the 2013 graduates in the following medical and health sciences programs:

• Medicine
• Communication Sciences and Disorders
• Medical Laboratory and Radiation Sciences
• Nursing
• Rehabilitation and Movement Science

The faculty and staff at Dana Medical Library wish you the very best for the future!

Dana Medical Library will have reduced hours over the Memorial Day weekend:

Saturday, May 25, 9 am-5 pm
Sunday, May 26, 9 am-5 pm
Monday, May 27, CLOSED (UVM Holiday).

Summer hours start June 15, 3013.

As usual, you can always find our hours on our home page.

Have a wonderful holiday weekend!

05-08-2013
By Jennifer Nachbur

The veteran with a traumatic brain injury, athlete with a torn ligament and child with delayed motor skills can all benefit from physical therapy, a practice that aims to help individuals restore function, improve mobility and reduce pain. Since 1973, the University of Vermont has been educating these health care professionals through a nationally well regarded program. UVM celebrated the 40th anniversary of the College of Nursing and Health Science’s physical therapy program with a special event Friday May 10, in the Grand Maple Ballroom in the Davis Center on the UVM campus.

Ranked 39th in the nation in 2012 according to U.S. News & World Report “Best Graduate Schools,” UVM’s physical therapy program began with a bachelor’s degree. In the early 2000s, UVM moved to a master’s degree in accordance with American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) requirements. Since 2006, UVM offers an entry-level doctorate in physical therapy (DPT) program as part of the APTA vision to have all physical therapists hold DPT degrees by the year 2020.

Samuel Feitelberg, P.T., M.S., who established the physical therapy department in 1973 and served as its first department chair, will be honored at the 40th anniversary event. He served on the UVM faculty for 26 years in such positions as associate dean and director of health sciences in the former UVM School of Allied Health Sciences. In 1996, he moved to Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y., where he was the founding associate dean of health sciences and chair of the Department of Physical Therapy.

“The College is proud to celebrate 40 years of excellence in education and growth in the physical therapy program,” says Patricia Prelock, Ph.D., dean of the UVM College of Nursing and Health Sciences. “Sam Feitelberg had a wonderful vision 40 years ago. The leaders who followed recognized the value of that vision and the opportunity to leverage the talents of faculty and the importance of the profession to ensure not only a high-quality curriculum, but the preparation of health care providers who make a real difference in the lives of others. The program’s contribution to the university, Vermont community and region has been extraordinary.”

Brian Reed, Ph.D., P.T.’74, UVM associate provost for curricular affairs and associate professor of rehabilitation and movement sciences, had the privilege of being both a student and a faculty member in the physical therapy program. His memories of the undergraduate physical therapy major experience include “late night camaraderie in the anatomy lab; long hours preparing for class; Larry McCrorey’s ability to make difficult concepts understandable; sitting around the table dressed in whites in clinical debriefings with Judy Anderson; Marry Moffroid’s good humor; the adventure of clinical affiliations; and lifting Sam Feitelberg onto our shoulders when word came that the PT program had received full accreditation.”

It’s no surprise that he felt excited to return to his alma mater as a faculty member in 1982. Thinking back over the past 30 years in his role as a professor, he fondly recalls faculty meetings where everyone sat around the table dressed in dark business attire, Sam Feitelberg’s ability to convince faculty to perform embarrassing skits, and attending Jean Held’s dinner parties. Reed says he enjoyed “the adventure of problem-based learning modules” and became passionate about teaching “great students who inspire us and make the world a better place.”

As a member of the last master’s degree class prior to UVM’s transition to the DPT degree, alumna Jessica Goodine, M.P.T.’05, was one of only 16 students in the MPT program her first year. The small class size provided an excellent learning environment and created significant bonds among the students.

Goodine, who specializes in working with spinal cord injury patients and is co-founder of the nonprofit corporation Empower Spinal Cord Injury, says, “The program taught me how to learn in a completely new manner, how to start from the problem and work backwards through problem-based learning.” While she didn’t find this educational format easy, she says “it taught me how to look at a patient as a whole, work together with my peers, and how to perform an effective and efficient literature search.” Goodine says the influence of Deborah O’Rourke, P.T., Ph.D., clinical associate professor of rehabilitation and movement sciences, had the greatest impact on her.

“Her office door was always open, she always had time to listen, she was incredibly empathetic, and she was always able to provide me with advice and multiple solutions,” shares Goodine. “If it weren’t for Deb, I would not have finished my program and I would not be where I am today in my PT career.”

Current UVM Rehabilitation and Movement Sciences Professor and Chair Diane Jette, P.T., M.S., D.Sc., worked part-time for Feitelberg from 1975 to 1981 while her husband completed a graduate degree in psychology at UVM. She believes that though PT education has changed over the past decades, it has also stayed the same.

“We have become much more evidence-based in our approaches to patient care,” Jette says. “In the 1970s, there was not a lot of empirical evidence to support our practice, so most of our treatment decisions were based on what we knew about the anatomy and physiology of the human body, but the effectiveness had not been tested. As both basic and applied science have provided more sophisticated information about how the human body functions, a physical therapist researchers have advanced our clinical knowledge, physical therapists’ treatments have become more sophisticated and more are better supported by studies of their effectiveness.” Jette also explains why the education of physical therapists changed over the past 40 years.

“In the 70s, physical therapists were educated at the baccalaureate level and practiced largely in hospital settings. Now the majority of PTs practice in out-patient practices and many own their own practices. In most states, patients may receive treatment by physical therapists without physician referral.”

It was due to this increasing scope of practice, expanding knowledge base and focus on professionalism, explains Jette, that all U.S. physical therapy programs now award the DPT degree. When she arrived at UVM in 2006, the PT program was in the process of transitioning to the DPT, and classes were small, but in the past six years, the program’s cohort size has tripled and the curriculum has been completely redesigned.

“Our DPT students have courses that prepare them to participate in healthcare at the system and societal levels, including health policy, quality improvement in healthcare, health care ethics and health promotion and wellness,” says Jette. “Because the focus of healthcare has shifted in many respects to the management of chronic conditions, and PT has a large role in improving and maintaining the health and function of individuals with many types of conditions, our students now have courses that aid their understanding of how pharmaceuticals affect their patients and their interventions, how imaging studies can be applied and interpreted in designing their treatment plans, and how to advocate for access to healthcare resources for their patients across their lifespan.”

Despite four decades of evolution and these major curricular changes, the characteristics of UVM’s PT students have not altered over time. According to Jette, they are “passionate, hard-working, creative and highly intelligent.” And, she adds, they will be playing a vital role in the evolving health care system and all of our lives.

“Our graduates will be helping all of us manage the inevitable changes that come with aging and allowing us to remain active and functional through our older years,” she says. “They are, and will continue to be, Sam’s legacy.”

How can you as a researcher distinguish your work from other researchers with similar names? In this new climate of multidisciplinary research how can you attach your identity to all of  your research output? Try ORCID, a non-profit, community-based effort to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers: “ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between you and your professional activities ensuring that your work is recognized.” For more information, go to about.orcid.org.

• Use the 4 study rooms when you wish to study in a small group. You can book a room with assistance from either service desk.
• The quietest areas of the library are in the back and periphery of the library.
• If you are a graduate student (including medical students), please use designated study areas.
• Please chat with friends or use your phone in the hallway outside of the library.
• If you can’t find a seat, ask at either service desk for assistance.
• A list of alternative places to study around campus can be found at each service desk.

Good luck with your work!

• 04-24-2013
• By Lee Ann Cox

As most National Institute of Health (NIH) Principal Investigators (PI’s) and authors have heard, beginning in Spring 2013, NIH may delay funds from grant-holders not in compliance with the public access policies. The public policy requires all peer-reviewed articles published with direct NIH support to report PMCID numbers within 12 months of publication.

MyNCBI has been adapted to serve PI’s as a tool for determining compliance and for reporting PubMed Central (PMC) articles. Author-researchers can “associate” their publications with their NIH grants, track their compliance in PMC, and create bibliographies for reporting to the NIH. It is as simple as signing into MyNCBI with an eRA Commons username and password.

The University of Vermont’s Sponsored Projects Administration (SPA) , and Jeanene Light, MLS, Dana Medical Library, have teamed up  to provide tools to assist PI’s and authors reach compliance. The Dana Medical Library’s research guide at: http://danaguides.uvm.edu/NIH-Public-Policy provides assistance in identifying journals that submit automatically to PMC, specifies procedures for submitting articles “manually”, and offers copyright transfer agreement advice.  The research guide also includes links to NIH FAQ’s and videos, as well as contact information for Ms. Light and SPA administrators.

Additionally, the Sponsored Project Administration office now has access to the Public Access Compliance Monitor which provides the current compliance status of all journal articles that NIH believes a particular grantee institution is responsible for under the terms of the Public Access Policy. In addition to classifying articles according to compliance status, the compliance monitor provides detailed information about each article: a full citation; associated grants and program directors/principal investigators (PDs/PIs); the PubMed ID and related IDs where available; and a link to the PubMed record. Institutions can also track the status of papers deposited into the NIH Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) system.

For a quick, eight minute video highlighting the changes and the procedures, watch the video produced by NYU’s Health Sciences Libraries: bit.ly/11Q39kY. If you have further questions, please contact Jeanene Light or your SPA administrator.

Dana Medical Library is grateful for the trained health care professionals who responded professionally and humanely to the recent tragic bombing in Boston. The following resources analyze the successes of the coordinated response among Boston hospitals, and highlight the importance of disaster planning exercises and emergency preparedness.

Wall Street Journal, Boston Hospitals Mobilize
The Boston Globe, Hospital scene was like a battle zone
New York Times, Surgeons Saved Lives, if Not Legs, After Boston Blasts
MedpageToday, Boston Bombing a Lesson in Prep for Hospitals

Books in the Dana Medical Library Collection

Disaster medicine / editors, David E. Hogan, Jonathan L. Burstein, 2nd ed., Philadelphia : Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2007; WB 105 D6108 2007

Major incident medical management and support : the practical approach in the hospital /  by Simon Carley, Kevin Mackway-Jones, Malden, Mass. : Blackwell Pub., 2005; WX 185 C2815m 2005

Public health management of disasters : the practice guide / Linda Young Landesman, 3rd ed., Washington, DC : American Public Health Association, 2012; WA 295 L256p 2012