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Tutorial 1—Resources for Professionals

Do your professional responsibilities involve finding, evaluating, and using health-related information? If so, you may share some of these concerns:

  • I'm not a doctor or a nurse-how do I know what's accurate?
  • How do I know I'm getting current information?
  • Searching the Web takes too much time—I'd rather talk to an expert.
  • I want to use websites that have easy, fast links.

This tutorial will address issues like these within the context of exploring HealthInfoIowa and other key health information resources.

Objectives

By the end of this session, you should be able to
  • discuss a positive strategy for dealing with consumer health information as it relates to your agency's policy and information service procedures;
  • use the Health on the Internet (HON) Code principles and/or other established guidelines to evaluate consumer health information on the Web;
  • use HealthInfoIowa, MEDLINEplus, and other selected resources to locate information on at least one topic that is relevant to your work or your customers' health information needs; and,
  • identify at least two means of acquiring or borrowing consumer health information materials that are not available on the Web.

As you go through this tutorial, you'll explore other sites on the Web. To return to the training tutorial, click on your browser's back button.

Consumer health information

Consumer health information is "any information that enables individuals to understand their health and make health-related decisions for themselves or their families." (Patrick and Koss, 1995 [http://nii.nist.gov/pubs/chi.html#1.2.5])

An important point: consumer health information does not equal patient education.

Consumer health information

  • Involves general health and wellness issues or treatment options
  • Is consumer-driven
  • Is sought for personal use or on behalf of family members or friends

Patient education

  • Is initiated by a doctor, nurse, or another health professional
  • Involves medical instructions or information given to a patient
  • Is prescribed for the purpose of changing behavior and improving health

Consumer health information is created and distributed by:

  • Health organizations
  • Healthcare professionals
  • Government agencies
  • Community organizations and agencies
  • Employers
  • Non-profit voluntary associations
  • Commercial enterprises
  • Libraries
  • News media
  • Networks of laypersons

Many of these individuals and organizations have used the Web to share consumer health information. The information ranges from reliable to downright weird.

Health literacy

Consumer health information is useless if the people who could benefit from it don't know what to do with it. Health literacy [http://www.healthinfoiowa.org/tutorials/glossary.html#literacy] "refers to the set of skills needed to read, understand, and act on basic health care information." (The Center for Health Care Strategies and National Academy on Aging Society [http://www.agingsociety.org/healthlit.htm])

Health literacy resources:

Professional issues related to consumer health information services

Where do you draw the line between making health information available and appearing to offer medical advice? Does your agency have a policy or procedures dealing with these issues? The distinction is significant, both in terms of liability and professional ethics.

Guidelines on agency policies and procedures:

If it seems to good to be true . . .

Have you fielded questions about these or similar claims?

  • Emu oil is "extremely beneficial in the treatment of rheumatism, arthritis ... infections ... prostate problems, ulcers ...cancer, heart trouble, hardening of the arteries, diabetes and more." (How to Spot Health Fraud [http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/1999/699_fraud.html])
  • You catch hantavirus by handling soda cans and cereal boxes-just like a stock clerk who became infected with hantavirus while working in a storeroom. (Current Health Related Hoaxes and Rumors [http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/hoaxes/hanta-hoax.htm])
  • Noni juice is effective in treating cancer, arthritis, and stiffness in the joints. (U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research: Compliance Activities [http://www.fda.gov/cder/warn/cyber/cyber2000.htm])

Evaluating health information

A number of reputable organizations have developed tools that you can use to evaluate health information websites:


Tell me more about evaluating health information.


Let's practice using a site-checker.


So where do you look?

Suppose you want to find reliable information on the use of anabolic steroids by bodybuilders. Where would you begin? You could try a generic search engine [http://www.healthinfoiowa.org/tutorials/glossary.html#search].

For example, try this search in AltaVista [http://www.altavista.com]:

Your search turns up thousands of web pages. Some of those pages are bound to be good, but do you have the time to look at each one?

Sometimes it makes more sense to start your search for information at a more focused, quality filtered website.

HealthInfoIowa, a resource for online information

HealthInfoIowa [http://www.healthinfoiowa.org/evaluating/] is a quality-filtered website sponsored by the State Library of Iowa [http://www.silo.lib.ia.us].

Resources available from HealthInfoIowa have been designed to meet the diverse needs of people in Iowa:

  • Healthcare consumers
  • Healthcare providers
  • County extension personnel
  • Public health workers
  • Librarians
  • Others responsible for providing health information to the public

You can use HealthInfoIowa to find:


Let's practice researching Iowa health resources.


MEDLINEplus, a service of the National Library of Medicine

MEDLINEplus [http://medlineplus.gov/] is one of the quality-filtered websites featured on the HealthInfoIowa general resources page. MEDLINEplus is easy to use and packed with reliable consumer health information.

For an overview of MEDLINEPlus, take the Tour [http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/tour/tour.html].

Try the anabolic steroids search in MEDLINEplus:

MEDLINEplus will search its files and report what it finds on an Advanced Search page. Scroll down the page to look at your options:

Screen graphic

Check out the contents of the Anabolic Steroids page:

Screen graphic

You may also be interested in a new feature of MEDLINEplus—interactive health tutorials that explain procedures and conditions in easy-to-read language [http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/tutorials.html]. These tutorials require Flash (version 4), a special type of browser software called a plug-in. If your computer does not have this software installed, you will be prompted to obtain a free download of Flash before you start the tutorial.

Additional resources:

Many of the pages in MEDLINEplus mention two additional resources:
  • ClinicalTrials.gov
    [http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct/gui/c/r]
    Provides patients, family members, and members of the public easy and free access to information on clinical studies for a wide range of diseases and conditions. For tips on using the database, click on "Help" from the home page.
  • PubMed
    [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/]
    Provided as a free service by the National Library of Medicine, with access to over 11 million citations from MEDLINE and additional life science journals. PubMed includes links to many sites providing full text articles and other related resources.

Using PubMed

While MEDLINEplus is designed for consumers, PubMed: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/]:

  • is a power tool originally designed for healthcare professionals;
  • contains over 11 million citations from MEDLINE and additional life science journals; and
  • includes links to sites that provide full text articles and other related resources.

For tips on using the full (and impressive) capabilities of PubMed, click on "Help" on the PubMed home page.

Short of time? Try a basic search for anabolic steroids and bodybuilders. Go to the PubMed home page and start by clicking "Limits". Then, follow steps 1, 2, and 3 in the figure below:

Screen graphic

Look at the results of your search:

Screen image

How many article citations did your search return? (63, listed on 4 pages)

Are they in any particular order? (Yes, they're in order by the date PubMed staff members entered the article citations in the system.)

Can you decipher the citations? Look at the third citation, excerpted below:

PubMed abstracts

Many of the articles in PubMed have abstracts that summarize the article contents. If you want to look at an abstract of one citation, click on the authors' names.

If you want to see the abstracts of several citations at one time:

  1. Click the small box to the left of each citation you want.
  2. Click on the down arrow just to the right of "Display" and select "Abstract" from the menu.
  3. Click on "Display".

This is a sample abstract:

Screen graphic

Can you find the location (or possibly even the e-mail address) of an article's authors?

Getting other relevant articles

PubMed has a related articles feature that you can use to find other good articles. When you find the citation of an article that looks particularly good:

  1. Click the "Related Articles" link to the right of the citation.
  2. PubMed will take you to a list of articles that match at least some of the criteria of the first article.
  3. Notice that these articles are not necessarily in chronological order and that no limits have been applied.

Printing PubMed results

If you click on the "Text" button you will see a more printer friendly version of your results. Print your results by clicking on your browser's print button.

You also have options for saving your search results. See the help section of PubMed for those options.


Tell me more about using PubMed.


Let's practice using online health information resources.


Getting copies of articles

If you search PubMed, you may find links to full-text articles available online at publisher sites. But not all of the over 11 million items are available online. If you want print copies of articles, you have a number of options:
  • Visit your local public library or a health sciences library that serves consumers.
    [http://nnlm.gov/members/adv.html]
  • Register as a Loansome Doc user to order articles you find in PubMed.
    [http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/loansome_doc.html]

You can also explore resources available from the State Library of Iowa:

Copyright © 2001 Iowa Consumer Health Project
Disclaimer and Privacy Statement

HealthInfoIowa, a consumer health information resource from the State Library of Iowa,
is funded by the National Library of Medicine under contract NO1-LM-6-3523 with the
University of Illinois at Chicago.

Updated: 26 February 2001