Look at the websites of three very different types of medical libraries: a hospital library, a big medical library attached to a research institution (they usually have hospitals affiliated), and a small health sciences library with no hospital attached. Examples are:
You may use up to two libraries from the examples given. Jot down your thoughts from viewing the pages. Are there big differences in the types of services offered? The resources? Staffing? Is there something of great interest to you? Are there services or resources you do not understand? **this does not need to be a great work of literature, nor does it need to be a complete analysis. It is a low-stakes peek into different flavors of medical libraries. Do not spend multiple hours on this.
The following is scenario is adapted from An Integrated, Case-Based Approach to Teaching Medical Students How to Locate the Best Available Evidence for Clinical Care by Stephanie M. Swanberg, Misa Mi, PhD, Keith Engwall and published in MedEdPORTAL. It comes from an exercise designed to teach pre-clerkship medical students how to turn a case into a clinical question, build a PICO, and turn the PICO into a well-built search in PubMed.
THE SCENARIO:
A patron you have never met before comes into your library at an academic medical center, walks up to your desk, and says the following:
“Are skin tests an appropriate diagnostic method for food allergies or is a blood test better? I have a 13-month-old infant with a suspected allergy to peanuts after two incidents of rash, diarrhea, and vomiting only hours after eating peanut butter. Her mother didn’t introduce peanuts into her diet until she was one-year-old and can think of no other diet or environmental changes since these incidents started and the mother wants testing to confirm.”
Using Lab worksheet case 2 (document G from the appendices), go through the prompts for building a well-constructed clinical question and PubMed search.
One of the most common interview job talks you will be asked to produce is a PubMed class. Usually they are 20-30 minute sessions. Below is an adaptation of a real interview class prompt. We are only giving you 15 minutes because we want time to provide you with constructive feedback. Please prepare a Zoom class based on this prompt. You will be teaching it in the section 3 session. You will need to make hard decisions about what to teach because of the tight time constraints. Be prepared to share your screen. You can find many examples of PubMed classes on YouTube, but if you would like to see one of our videos, please email and we will send out a link.
You have been asked to give a quick, 15-minute PubMed training session as part of a longer medical school Zoom class. Because of the tight schedule you have exactly 15 minutes. You may provide supplemental materials, but they are not required. Please prepare and present a PubMed overview. For the purposes of this scenario, please assume the audience is made up of new medical students that have some familiarity with PubMed (I.e. most have heard of it and some have at least used it), but few have had any real training.
Take some time to complete the SIFT training linked above (it should take approximately 2.5-4 hours). There will be several prompts embedded in the training, as well as discussions to walk you through applying SIFT. When you have completed the course, find a health claim found through a social media post, blog, news, etc. Using that health claim and link, answer the SIFT prompts in your document.