Education for inpatients: working with nurses through the clinical information system

Librarians at the UMDNJ Cooper Library have been filling orders for patient education materials through Cooper University Hospital's Clinical Information System (CIS) since December 2000. This service was instituted in response to a JCAHO survey, which revealed that although patient education was being provided, it was not being routinely documented. Patient education orders fall into two categories: customized disease/procedure information and smoking cessation information. Nurses note the condition(s) and/or procedure(s) regarding which information is needed and indicate the education level of the material desired (basic, intermediate or advanced). Requests are received via a dedicated printer in the reference office. Librarians rely heavily upon a wide variety of Web-based consumer health resources, including proprietary resources such as MD Consult and Micromedex CareNotes. Patient Transport staff delivers two copies of all materials to nursing stations on patient care floors. One copy is for the patient to keep, while the other is attached to the patient's chart. To complete and document that patient education was provided, librarians record the order as filled in the CIS system.     

The evaluation of peer-review quality

This paper discusses the role of peer review in the decision-making processes of scientific journals. It outlines the objectives of peer review and some of the problems. It then goes on to describe research into the quality of peer review, in particular the BMJ's programme of research to date, the results obtained, and consequent changes in practice. It also looks briefly at future possibilities for research into the peer-review process.     

Understanding How the Arts Can Enhance Learning

Understanding how the arts can enhance learning has long been discussed and debated among educators, students, parents, artists, art historians, and philosophers. Many anecdotal examples reference the value and benefits of the arts in a range of fields and learning domains. Emerging methodologies in the brain sciences have added new perspectives and research‐based approaches to better understand the role the arts might play in learning. Psychologists, cognitive scientists, and now neuroscientists are approaching this topic by exploring memory, sensory systems, and other biological measures. The interdisciplinary and potentially interdependence of these fields to work together to identify the neurological mechanisms involved in the arts may offer educators, parents, and child care providers with important information about how we learning takes place. By bringing together uncommon and divergent thinking from a wide range of disciplines, there is an opportunity to change the way we teach, parent, and serve children using the arts to help enhance learning. This issue of Mind, Brain, and Education celebrates the range of approaches that are emerging to shed light and insight in this field.     

Child protection and justice systems processing of serious child abuse and neglect cases

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to examine the trajectory of cases through four systems: child protection, law enforcement, the dependency courts, and the criminal courts. METHOD: This study focused on a county selected from a 41-county telephone survey conducted for the National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-3). For this analysis prospective samples were drawn from law enforcement (n=225) and the county child protection (CPS) agency (n=225) and followed through in-depth case tracking across all agencies and through both the dependency and criminal court systems. RESULTS: The percentage of CPS cases opened in dependency court was similar to prior studies (29%), but the acceptance and prosecution rates were much higher--92% of the cases referred from CPS, including many cases of physical abuse. Compared to referrals from CPS to law enforcement (93%), few cases were referred from law enforcement to CPS (17%). Anecdotally, case referral patterns appeared to be influenced by communication patterns and mutual positive regard, regardless of the collaborative protocols in place. One of the most instructive findings was the degree of difficulty in tracking cases across organizations and the types of obstacles that impeded success. Disorganization was not an issue, rather internal structures set up to facilitate intra-organizational processing were the same structures that actually impeded cross-organizational case finding. CONCLUSIONS: It is not sufficient to rely on the existence of multi-disciplinary teams or Child Advocacy Centers to ensure collaboration. More attention to daily tasks and activities as well as the nature and quality of communication is warranted. On the technical side, use of common case identifiers on cases that are cross-referred is strongly recommended. Future studies should broaden the scope of inquiry to include the consequences of all case trajectories, rather than solely focusing on the justice system.