Medical information, health sciences librarians, and professional liability

As a gatekeeper to medical literature and a critical link in the delivery of information to physicians, the librarian's role raises the issue of the librarian's professional liability. The paper suggests several ways in which liability may attach to the librarian or the librarian's employers. Although the librarian's personal risk is negligible, the physician's exposure due to ineffective library work is substantial since the courts have held that a physician must keep abreast of progress in his field. Librarians can also become associated with professional liability actions as part of a case against a physician or hospital through the legal doctrine of vicarious liability. The paper concludes by suggesting several proactive steps for health sciences librarians to pursue to insulate themselves from professional liability and to insulate physicians and institutions from vicarious liability.     

Risk management information for HIV infection

This article discusses HIV infection in terms of the risk manager's information needs in the health care environment. The malpractice problem, increasing workman's compensation suits, the greater role of the ombudsman, implementation of the National Practitioner Data Bank, and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations' (JCAHO) emphasis on clinical excellence are conditions which have given greater importance to the risk manager's position. Included in this article are hedges to retrieve various components of risk management and a select bibliography from AIDSLINE.     

Preparation for ethical decision-making: An analysis of research in professional education

The current societal and professional context presents a variety of ethical challenges to decision makers. The importance of educational preparation for ethical decision-making and ethical leadership has been addressed in the literature of library and information science (LIS), among other professions. However, it can be quite difficult to measure the impact of professional ethics education on students. This article is based on an evaluation of published original research related to ethics education in disciplines supported by professional education, including education, nursing, allied health, journalism, social work, public health, engineering, and LIS. The study considers data related to research design, methodologies used, populations studied, approaches to measuring impact, levels of impact, and publication in the journal literature. Results indicate more extensive research in education and nursing as compared with other fields, a lack of baseline data gathering for comparison, a reliance on a limited number of data-gathering techniques, and a tendency toward studying alumni over current students     

Advances in the phylogenesis of Agaricales and its higher ranks and strategies for establishing phylogenetic hypotheses

We present an overview of previous research results on the molecular phylogenetic analyses in Agaricales and its higher ranks (Agaricomycetes/Agaricomycotina/Basidiomycota) along with the most recent treatments of taxonomic systems in these taxa. Establishing phylogenetic hypotheses using DNA sequences, from which an understanding of the natural evolutionary relationships amongst clades may be derived, requires a robust dataset. It has been recognized that single-gene phylogenies may not truly represent organismal phylogenies, but the concordant phylogenetic genealogies from multiple-gene datasets can resolve this problem. The genes commonly used in mushroom phylogenetic research are summarized.     

On the problem of determining a citation index of publications by Kazakh scientists

This paper discusses the evaluation of scientific activity with the help of some scientometric indices, in particular, a citation index. The information massif of the bibliographic database of citations to domestic publications of Kazakh authors is statistically described.