Thursday, May 26, 2016

Dr Alfred Roy Awarded For Teaching Excellence by Figure 1

The Chair and Professor of Pathology at UMHS, Alfred Roy, MD, MBBS, has been awarded the Figure One 2016 Healthcare Educators Award. This award is given in recognition of outstanding teaching excellence and commitment to going above and beyond for their students.  
Congratulations Dr Roy!
Since completing basic medicine and residency in Pathology in 1993, Dr Roy has held numerous key positions in medical education and Pathology with such institutions as the University of the West Indies, Melaka University, Manipal University, St. Matthew's University, and the American University of Antigua, before joining the University of Medicine and Health Sciences in May of 2013.
Figure 1 is a growing internet phenomenon which connects the global medical community in the ongoing quest for the patient diagnosis!
"Where do doctors turn when even they don’t know what’s wrong with you? Colleagues? Books? The internet?"
Launched in 2013, the Figure 1 app was born from the idea that sharing images of what confounds doctors with other doctors across the world can help point them in the direction of the right answer.
Figure 1 is like an Instagram for doctors connecting one million healthcare professionals to view, discuss, and share medical cases. This crowd-sourcing for a diagnosis is effectively a win-win situation with everyone learning and benefiting; including professors, medical students, and patients!

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Wednesday, May 18, 2016

NIH Produces Online Atlas of Human Malformation Syndromes

Atlas of Human Malformation Syndromes in Diverse Populations

An international group of clinical geneticists have created an online atlas of human malformation syndromes in diverse populations to assist clinicians with diagnosing syndromic disorders. The website will include photographs and the molecular diagnoses of individuals from geographically diverse locations around the globe. Previously, the only available diagnostic atlas featured photos of patients with northern European ancestry, which often does not represent the characteristics of these diseases in patients from other parts of the world.
"Birth defects remain a leading cause of infant mortality and childhood morbidity throughout the world. An accurate and early syndromic diagnosis is paramount, as late diagnosis can result in a delay in intervention and treatment of accompanying anomalies such as congenital heart defects or endocrine disorders."
Most major malformations are non-specific to a particular syndrome, thus this web site will attempt to show the pattern of malformations that are consistent with a syndrome. The authors foresee this new online tool being used extensively by physicians, genetic counselors, and trainees throughout the world.

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Friday, May 13, 2016

UMHS Offering New History of Medicine Elective

UMHS will now be offering an elective course called the History of Medicine [MICM 0991] with Dr Michael Doherty. There will be 5 total lectures, one hour each, held in the campus auditorium beginning at 11:30 on each of the following Tuesdays: May 24, June 14 & 21, July 12 & 19, 2016.

Applying for residency is very competitive; it is important to have extracurricular/volunteer activities on your resume. Those can be club activities, health fairs, elective courses, and so forth. It’s something you all should consider. The History of Medicine elective is a good choice; it’s relevant, goes on your transcript, and you’re on campus anyway.

Why is this kid from 1958 going to see the butcher for a black eye?...

There is no fee for the course, and the only requirement for receiving credit is by attending all 5 sessions. If interested, please email Dr Doherty.

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Thursday, May 05, 2016

Resources Tour of the UMHS Anne Ross Library

Anne Ross Library

Join me on a tour of the Anne Ross Library where I will be showcasing the information resources provided by the university for the benefit of the UMHS student body and faculty. I hope you will find time to further explore and utilize these valuable databases, as you probably realize you can’t memorize it all! Once you are practicing medicine, the key to success will be your ability to search out the best and most current medical information when and where you need it.
The foundation of evidence-based practice is being able to find, access and evaluate the medical evidence!
The Anne Ross Library Home page is your jumping off point to all of the library's resources so we will start the tour there http://lib.umhs-sk.net. The online Anne Ross Library Catalogue is the first link in the left-hand side bar. Browse the library’s collection of books, videos, ebooks, etc. and place holds on the items you need that are checked out, or click the link provided in the record to go to the ebook itself. The LibraryWorld catalogue provides a mobile interface link or downloadable App for easy access to searching the library’s holdings. The mobile login for the catalogue is USER: AnneRoss Library (notice NO space between ‘Anne’ and ‘Ross’), and the PSW: (blank) – no password is required. Search for ‘ebook’ or ‘electronic resource’ along with your search term, to easily locate in the catalogue records available downloadable ebooks.

Anne Ross Library Home

The next link is to MyUMHS which is the UMHS Egnyte file server drive or online ‘M’ drive for remote access to all your course materials. If you can’t recall the login sent to you via email, contact the Library.

Clicking on the links in the second grouping of the left sidebar and you can access the various EBSCO databases. Do you remember this login? In particular on this list of databases, take time to explore EBSCO’s DynaMed database,a topical, point-of-care clinical database. It will be invaluable to you in ICM and beyond. When you don’t have time to search the journal literature for the latest treatment options, DynaMed gathers this information for you and updates the database daily. To access DynaMed on your mobile device go into DynaMed and click on the ‘Mobile’ tab along the top of the screen for the latest step-by-step instructions.

NOTE: Currently we are trialing the new DynaMed Plus database as well. This updated DynaMed platform has expanded and been enhanced in many ways. In fact, this produce has been adopted by the ACP (American College of Physicians) as their official clinical decision support tool. Make sure you explore it too!

NOTE 2: UMHS is also currently trialing the GIDEON (Global Infectious Disease and Epidemiology Network) database from EBSCO which is a must for your Microbiology and Epidemiology classes with its extensive microbiology and data on global infectious diseases, and current disease outbreaks.

Next check out the EBSCO journal databases such as Academic Search Premier and Medline Complete. These databases provide you with access to around 6000 journals, approximately 2000 of which are medical journals with full text! This resource will be very useful to you for researching a medical topic and discovering the latest articles published on that topic. The advantage to these EBSCO journal databases over PubMed (or Google & Google Scholar for that matter) is the instant and comprehensive access to the full text for many of the articles. In fact full text is provided for 34% of the citations found in PubMed!

You also have the option of performing your literature search in PubMed itself (using the special link you see on the Library Home page) and being provided the LinkOut notification (the UMHS logo will display in the top right corner whenever we have available the full text of an article retrieved by your PubMed search). In order for the LinkOut icon to appear you must also be signed into your personal MyNCBI account, which you can set up for yourself for free.

The EBSCO Academic and Clinical ebook collections (containing over 150,000 ebooks, 2000 of which are clinical ebooks) are also accessible using your UMHS EBSCO login. However, you will also need to set up for yourself your own personal MyEBSCO account. This personal second login will allow you to save your database searches, collect articles in folders, as well as download the ebooks. In addition an EBSCO ebook App is available for your mobile devices allowing you to search, check out, and download ebooks to your mobile reading device, tablet or phone.

AccessMedicine at UMHS

Returning to the Library Home page next please locate the link for Access Medicine. This valuable resource provides you with full text access to over 85 medical reference textbooks (including Harrison’s’!), procedural and instructional videos, clinical cases, practice questions, a drug database, the Diagnosaurus diagnostic tool, etc. Course materials and small group project assignments from your professors may also be available to you via this platform. Your personal logins are set up and emailed to you soon after your coming to UMHS. If you have trouble accessing your personal space in this database, please contact the library. Med4 and EBS5 students MUST verify their personal logins before the end of their last St. Kitts semester in order to be able to access their course materials in Maine and during the Clinical Core Rotations!

AccessMedicine also provides an App for your mobile. Set up instructions for your device is on the Anne Ross Library Blog. The App is designed as a diagnostic tool and contains four key diagnostic resources from McGraw Hill, but not the whole AccessMedicine database, or the Custom Curriculum.

VERY IMPORTANT: In Maine all the course materials for your ICM 2 course will be assigned through learning modules in AccessMedicine. Also, when you go out on your Clinical Core Rotationsa whole curriculum of more than 150 learning modules will be assigned to you for your completion during that time. So it is very important that you are completely up to speed with using AccessMedicine, understanding how to access your modules, and how to submit them on completion. Look under the ‘Custom Curriculum’ tab for your assigned learning modules.

The practice questions in USMLE-Easy will help you test your knowledge with USMLE-style questions while preparing for the USMLE Step 1, 2, and 3. In order to take full advantage of the test bank you must login via the UMHS institutional interface with your personal login that was created for you (an email was previously sent regarding your logins). If you have trouble accessing please contact the Library.

Next I would like to draw your attention to the various internet resource 'Kits', in particular the Medical Kit , and each of the semester specific 'kits', such as the Med5 Kit . I hope you will find some of these recommended websites useful. Please send me feedback and site suggestions so I can continue to improve the 'Kits'.

Finally, the four column section along the bottom is a gathering of links to in-house resources that you will probably need to access frequently, such as our social media sites, ExamSoft exam portal, etc.

Remember to regularly check this blog, the Anne Ross Library Blog, and The UMHS Endeavour Blog for interesting news posts and access to a wealth of information pertaining to medical resources and educational programs.

In this bottom section you will also find links to your Webmail and to the CAMS Student Portal, etc. CAMS is where you will find your courses, your attendance record, and some of your grades. Most of your grades are found in your ExamSoft account, but at least your final course grade, will be posted for your confidential viewing in CAMS. Your CAMS login is provided for you by the IT department.

Keep up to date on UMHS Research happenings on the UMHS Research Wiki and be aware of upcoming medical conferences, calls for papers, etc. on the Research Committee’s Pinterest Board.

Notice the link to the UMHS Exam Portal right there are well. This is the link to our computer based testing program ExamSoft. This program is what all of you are using for exam taking and where most of your professors release your scores on quizzes and exams.

Now you can follow the Library on Twitter and Pinterest! As you go forward in your career, stay up-to-date on new resource developments by checking the Library Blog, the Library Twitter feed, and the Library Pinterest boards. Further descriptions of the library's resources, links to them, and instructions on how to navigate them, are available via the Library Blog and the Library website, particularly in the section 'Navigation Guides' on the 'Medical Kit'.

I hope you all found this library resource tour valuable. Let me know if you need further help accessing and searching any of these resources. Each resource also has HELP links – so have fun and play around with trying different searches and different resources!

Remember to stay informed by reading the blogs and subscribing to our Twitter feed and Pinterest boards.

Please don’t hesitate to drop by the library or phone, email or Skype us, Linda, Doya, Jezelle, Raeeza, or Ann , for further assistance with accessing any information resources.

Your suggestions are always welcome. Have a great semester!

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