Video of the Royal Visit to U of C!

iS2 Time Reporting eLearning Course Available

A reminder that all support staff (INCLUDING STUDENT/HOURLY EMPLOYEES) will be entering their own timesheets through self-service starting with the Aug. 1-15 timesheet period. All staff need to take the Time Reporting eLearning Course.

Also a reminder that the ‘Reports to Manager’ will have to approve timesheets within Peoplesoft, so make sure you take the Manager Self-Service course.

http://www.ucalgary.ca/is2project/

HIN Continuing Education Workteam “Assessing Your Needs” Survey Results

At the end of 2010, the HIN CE workteam sent out a survey asking what you wanted the CE Committee to offer. Eight completed the survey. This is a summary of your responses.

The first four questions asked about possible themes or sessions. Each choice could be ranked “Top priority”, “Somewhat important and will attend”, “Maybe not right now” or “Not a priority at all”.

1. How to use new and existing U of C resources

Rated “Top priority” or “Somewhat important and will attend” were: CINAHL (7 votes), PubMed (6), RefWorks (6), and Advanced searching in OVID databases (6). Web of Science was next in priority, followed by Point of care resources and Grey literature resources. MDConsult and STAT!Ref trailed last.

2. How to use some new technologies/software

RSS feeds and E-table of contents each garnered 6 votes, followed by Web 2.0 tools, iGoogle, Drupal, and Blackboard, each with 5. Creating displays received 3 and Jing to create instructional videos got 2.

3. Personal Empowerment
Here, Communication (7) and Time Management (7) were the skills selected the most, followed by Leadership (5) and Business writing (5). Project management lagged with 4 votes.

4. Work/Life Issues

How to deal with difficult client situations was ranked “Top priority” or “Somewhat important and will attend” by everyone. “Job and my health” and “Giving feedback, getting feedback” each received 6 votes. “Work safety” received 5 votes and “Balancing work and personal life” received 4.

We also asked about challenges to attending CE sessions and then best times and locations for training. You responded unanimously with “Lack of resources (e.g.: Time, Money, Not having the work coverage)”. Two also chose “Not knowing the sources of programs”. No-one picked “Not knowing which sessions would be most appropriate for me” or “Don’t think taking CE programs is important.” There was a comment “location location location”, which many can probably relate to.

There were no obvious preferences in times nor locations: the morning: 2, the afternoon: 2, and it doesn’t matter: 4. No-one chose the last Friday of the month, which was the regular day choice that we offered. The location question also did not elicit clear preferences. Two preferred sessions at your Knowledge Centre, 3 at Health Sciences Library, while 5 said it doesn’t matter.

I hope you found the results interesting. Thank you for taking the time to give feedback. We have already offered some sessions and are using the survey results to guide us in implementing others.

Computer Classroom 1460 now has AHS Calgary Zone Access!

The instructor PCs in the HSL Computer Classroom can now access everything within the AHS Calgary Zone in addition to our normal U of C access.

Useful database: Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts

I had a literature search request while on the HSL reference desk yesterday that led me to a database I'd never used before, but I think it would be a good one to add to our toolkit for certain literature searches.

The client wanted articles on translation/interpretation services in health care, and I thought I would search a linguistics database as well as the usual suspects. Linguistic and Language Behavior Abstracts turns out to have all kinds of interesting health-related content. I found some relevant articles to my search, but also turned up lots of stuff from the speech-language literature (not sure what the overlap with CINAHL would be here), and lots of great stuff on topics like doctor-patient communication and health literacy. If we are asked to search on these topics, it would definitely be a good idea to include a search of this database. In addition to keyword searching, it seems to have a fairly good set of index terms.

There's another database called Linguistics Abstracts online, but it appears more academic in nature, and its so-called Advanced Search doesn't offer the option of building very complex search strings, so I gave up on it.

Pubmed for Handheld beta product

PICO search boxes

http://pubmedhh.nlm.nih.gov/nlmd/pico/piconew.php

Homepage

http://pubmedhh.nlm.nih.gov/

Hospital Funding Health Policy Website and Newsletter

In conjunction with UBC's Centre for Health Services & Policy Research (CHSPR): Health Care Funding (http://www.hospitalfunding.ca/)

The site is currently focused on the policy changes to hospital funding going on across the different provinces. This site examines the consequences of these policy changes, both intended and unintended. The site's focus will be broadened to include post-actue, ambulatory, and physician care.

There is a quarterly newsletter. You can subscribe to receive future issues on the site (http://goo.gl/yWpPD).

The site is impartial, built to provide a reliable source of information for the changes currently going on in health care across Canada.