IM and SMS Reference Services for Librarians (THE TECH SET #19), by Amanda Bielskas and Kathleen M. Dreyer

ABSTRACT

In an era where physicians rely on point-of-care databases that provide filtered, pre-appraised, and quickly accessible clinical information by smartphone applications, it is difficult to teach medical students the importance of knowing not only when it is appropriate to search the primary medical literature but also how to do it. This column will describe how librarians at an academic health sciences library use an unusual clinical case to make demonstrations of searching primary medical literature real and meaningful to medical students, and to illustrate vividly the importance of knowing what to do when the answer to a clinical question cannot be found in a point-of-care database.