CMA Infobase: Clinical Practice Guidelines

ABSTRACT

The CMA Infobase is a free Web-based resource that contains evidence-based clinical practice guidelines. The database is maintained by the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) and is available on its Web site. The CMA Infobase currently contains 1,200-plus clinical practice guidelines either developed or endorsed by an authoritative health care organization located in Canada. It is an alternative source of free clinical practice guidelines to the National Guideline Clearinghouse. This column will cover the basics of CMA Infobase, including searching, special features, and available resources which complement the database.     

Guideline.gov: A Database of Clinical Specialty Guidelines

The National Guidelines Clearinghouse (NGC), also known as Guideline.gov, is a database of resources to assist health care providers with a central depository of guidelines for clinical specialty areas in medicine. The database is provided free of charge and is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The guidelines for treatment are updated regularly, with new guidelines replacing older guidelines every five years. There are hundreds of current guidelines with more added each week. The purpose and goal of NGC is to provide physicians, nurses, and other health care providers, insurance companies, and others in the field of health care with a unified database of the most current, detailed, relevant, and objective clinical practice guidelines.     

Making Generic Tutorials Content Specific: Recycling Evidence-based Practice (EBP) Tutorials for Two Disciplines

Librarians at the Boston University Medical Center constructed two interactive online tutorials, “Introduction to EBM” and “Formulating a Clinical Question (PICO),” for a Family Medicine Clerkship and then quickly repurposed the existing tutorials to support an Evidence-based Dentistry course. Adobe's ColdFusion software was used to populate the tutorials with course-specific content based on the URL used to enter each tutorial, and a MySQL database was used to collect student input. Student responses were viewable immediately by course faculty on a password-protected Web site. The tutorials ensured that all students received the same baseline training and allowed librarians to tailor a subsequent library skills workshop to student tutorial answers. The tutorials were well-received by the medical and dental schools and have been added to mandatory first-year Evidence-based Medicine (EBM) and Evidence-based Dentistry (EBD) courses, meaning that every medical and dental student at BUMC will be expected to complete these tutorials.     

Continual Evolution: The Experience Over Three Semesters of a Librarian Embedded in an Online Evidence-Based Medicine Course for Physician Assistant Students

This column examines the experience, over three years, of a librarian embedded in an online Epidemiology and Evidence-based Medicine course, which is a requirement for students pursuing a Master of Science in Physician Assistant Studies at Pace University. Student learning outcomes were determined, a video lecture was created, and student learning was assessed via a five-point Blackboard test during year one. For years two and three, the course instructor asked the librarian to be responsible for two weeks of course instruction and a total of 15 out of 100 possible points for the course. This gave the librarian flexibility to measure additional outcomes and gather more in-depth assessment data. The librarian then used the assessment data to target areas for improvement in the lessons and Blackboard tests. Revisions made by the librarian positively affected student achievement of learning outcomes, as measured by the assessment conducted the subsequent semester. Plans for further changes are also discussed.     

Nurse Research Rounds: In the Spirit of Inquiry

Nurses deliver a point-of-care service to patients. The nursing staff work extensive schedules and do not have time to research a clinical question to help support patient care. This article describes the implementation of the first research service that supports evidence-based practice at Georgia’s second largest hospital. Inspired by a similar service at a children’s hospital in 2014, the first year of nurse research rounds provides clinicians a new research service in their clinical setting.