Listen While You Work: Audio Resources for Continuous Learning

By Cynthia Burke, Reference and Web Services Section

In the movie, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” the dwarfs sing and demonstrate the song, “Whistle While You Work.” Whistling helps break the monotony (boredom and stress) of their work day, and made the day seem to go faster. Well, we can also listen while we work.

I listen to music while I’m working. Sometimes, I listen to audiotaped programs or a radio station while working. Here are some health sciences programs you can listen to and subscribe to while working. You can also refer your customers to these sites:

• NLM Director’s Comments Podcast. Each podcast includes a written transcript of the podcast. Hear about the latest medical news in lay terms.
• NIH Research Radio Podcasts. Episodes are about 25 minutes long and cover 4-5 topics. Written transcripts accompany the podcast.  The podcasts are updated every Friday. You can even access the audio podcasts by phone.
• USA.gov Podcast Directory. Listen and subscribe to podcasts on a variety of topics, including Health, the Environment, and Science.
• The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This government agency produces many podcasts about public health. These include timely posts about children having chicks and ducklings as pets, adult immunization, and tips from former smokers.
• The Mayo Clinic. An international research hospital group offers podcasts for health professionals and laypersons.

NLM, National Institutes of Health (NIH), other federal government, university, and medical center podcasts are also available free through iTunes.

Photo Credit:  The Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (OUSD P&R), an official U.S. Government Web site.

ACTION:  Subscribe to a health podcast today.

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We invite you to ask questions or make comment about the ReferencePoint blog or its content. Use the space at the end of each posting.

Please do not send reference questions to the ReferencePoint blog. For reference questions, visit our FAQ page and our RWS Home Page.

May 10, 2012  Tags: podcasts, professional development  Posted in: Audiovisuals, Professional Development  No Comments

Reference Challenge – ANSWER to How Hot or Cold is Warm?

By Marcia Zorn, Reference & Web Services Section

Our user isn’t asking about the therapeutic use of heat or cold, or how hot the water needs to be to kill certain organisms.  This is a very practical question, looking for a straight answer. 

Books, electronic or print, are still great resources.  For this question, PubMed is not the best or quickest way to find the answer. 

We found the reference values he sought in:

• The Free dictionary by Farlex at http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/warm+bath. It has definitions and temperatures for cool, cold, hot, warm (tepid) baths from some of the major medical dictionaries, including the Miller-Keane Encyclopedia and Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing, and Allied Health. 7th ed. Philadelphia: Saunders; c2003. Miller-Keane provides the following:
  • cool bath: one in water from 60 to 75 degree F (15 to 24 degree C).
  • hot bath: one in water from 98 to 112 degree F (36 to 44 degree C).
  • tepid bath: one in water 85 to 92 degree F (30 to 33 degree C).
  • warm bath: one in water 90 to 104 degree F (32 to 40 degree C).

 

• Lippincott Manual of Nursing Practice.  9th ed.  Philadelphia: Wolters-Kluwer/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 2010.  This describes a lukewarm bath as
  “90 degrees to 100 degrees F. (32.2 to 37.8 degrees C.)”

 

•  Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary. 32nd ed. Philadelphia: Elsevier/Saunders; c2012. Bath, p. 204-5.
  • cold less than 18 degree C
  • cool 18-24 degree C
  • hot above body temperature (37 degree C)
  • tepid 24-33 degree C
  • warm 33-36 degree C

Information regarding bath water temperature for a few conditions is also available from the National Guidelines Clearinghouse.  For a user who needs more information, an additional resource is the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

For the concern a “hot” bath might exacerbate an existing condition, a possible PubMed search for information is to combine the disorder with AND Baths/adverse effects[mh] AND Temperature[mh]

The first citation found with the search Autoimmune diseases[mh] AND Baths/ae [mh] AND Temperature[mh] is:

Kohlmeier RE, DiMaio VJ, Kagan-Hallet K. Fatal hyperthermia in hot baths in
individuals with multiple sclerosis. Am J Forensic Med Pathol. 2000
Sep;21(3):201-3. Cited in: PubMed PMID: 10990274.

May 4, 2012  Tags: PubMed, reference challenge  Posted in: PubMed, The Reference Challenge Column  No Comments

Cultural Competence and Health

By Cynthia Burke, Reference and Web Services Section

Did you ever watch “The Godfather, Part 2?” In one scene, it’s the early 1900s. Young Vito Corleone (later, Don Corleone) is distressed. He watches helplessly as his wife and another woman treat their oldest son, Fredo, for pneumonia. Poor Fredo was kicking and screaming while Mrs. Corleone held him down and the woman put lit paper or cloth under a cup, and placed the cup on the boy’s chest to create suction. He really screamed after that.  This is cupping. It’s been used for thousands of years by different groups. However, some people mistake cupping and other traditional remedies for child abuse because they don’t understand it is a cultural practice to treat, not harm.  More about cupping is in the NLM Digital Collections.  

One way to search for MEDLINE journal articles is to enter the terms (cupping AND therapy AND heat) and limit the search to “Complementary Therapies,” under “Subjects.” A PubMed search strategy for cupping is

-          “Complementary Therapies/methods”[Majr] AND cupping [tiab].

You can also run a search in PubMed Clinical Queries.

The Office of Minority Health (OMH) defines cultural competency and its importance; and the OMH is a good starting point for information about healthcare professional cultural competence.  A website that focuses specifically on cultural competence training for health care providers is Think Cultural Health by the OMH.  The HRSA Culture, Language and Health Literacy site is another information source for health professionals providing care to persons of different cultures.  The Association for American Medical Colleges has more resources for teaching and assessing cultural competence of medical students. Some well-known cultural competence in nursing authors include the late Ruth Elaine Davidhizar, DNS, and Joyce Newman Giger, PhD, and Madeleine Leininger, PhD, LHD, DS, who founded the Transcultural Nursing Society. Their texts, and another standard text in this field, are:

• Giger JN. Transcultural nursing: assessment and intervention. 6^th ed. Philadelphia: Mosby; 2012. 736 p.
• Leininger MM, McFarland M. Culture care diversity and universality: a worldwide nursing theory.  2^nd ed. Burlington (MA): Jones & Bartlett; 2005. 413 p.
• Spector RE. Cultural diversity in health and illness. 7^th ed. Upper Saddle River (NJ): Prentice Hall; 2008. 432 p.

In sum, people of many nationalities and cultures who live in the United States bring with them from their countries of origin their medicinal practices.  Cupping is only one such practice.  As health care providers today become more aware of Cultural Competence, interest in understanding culturally-related health practices grows, too.

Photo Credits:   Photo of earth used by permission of NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/earthday/media/earth.jpg

ACTION:  Find out if the health care providers at your institution have any favorite cultural competency materials or Web sites. What languages or cultures are hard to find information materials about?

Contact Us

We invite you to ask questions or make comment about the ReferencePoint blog or its content. Use the space at the end of each posting.

Please do not send reference questions to the ReferencePoint blog. For reference questions, visit our FAQ page and our RWS Home Page.

May 3, 2012  Tags: cultural competence  Posted in: Cultural Competence, PubMed  No Comments

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