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Lora L Thompson

Publications and source records attributed to Lora L Thompson.

3 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2005

Zero-based print journal collection development in a community teaching hospital library: planning for the future.

OBJECTIVES: The paper describes and evaluates the success of a zero-based collection development approach to print serials in a community teaching hospital. METHODS: The authors first assessed the environmental factors that would determine future needs of the medical library and its customers. Liaisons to various departments and constituencies were substantially involved in the data-gathering phase. Using newly defined collection parameters, a list of journals to consider was compiled and each journal was categorized justifying its inclusion. Any title not having a strong fit in at least one category was eliminated from further consideration. RESULTS: Overall, 21 subscriptions were cancelled and 34 were added. Despite a 15% increase in total subscription costs, mostly due to normal annual journal price increases, the average cost per journal went down from $344 to $327. Journal usage went up over 30%, interlibrary loan lending went down 25%, and borrowing went up 20%. CONCLUSION: As resources available to libraries decline, it becomes critical that collections and services are continually and systematically reviewed with a view to keeping them aligned with the mission of the organization, needs of the customers, and emerging trends. Zero-based collection development can be a valuable tool in bringing a print journal collection into closer alignment with the needs of library customers.

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PubMed2004

Training surgeons to do evidence-based surgery: a collaborative approach.

BACKGROUND: Three of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education general competencies contain specific wording indicating that trainees must learn how to locate, appraise, and integrate the best information from the literature into their patient care practices. What is less clear is how to best translate evidence-based concepts into the workday of the resident, fellow, or attending surgeon. In this article we describe our use of the assignment-based training program we developed to ensure that our trainees can actually do what is required to practice evidence-based operations. STUDY DESIGN: Our collaborative program draws on the expertise of an attending surgeon, a medical librarian, and a research coordinator. The curriculum is designed so that all residents in our program develop and refine their evidence-based surgery skills in a context relating to their clinical practice. They are given a practice-related clinical question and are asked to demonstrate their competence in finding the best available evidence to answer it. This involves restating the question as a well-formulated clinical question, doing a focused literature search, critically appraising the results to find the best evidence, and integrating the information into practice, if appropriate. Search assignments are evaluated using a structured form and additional training is designed based on the results. Another question is then assigned to assess improvement. RESULTS: Residents' performance on a first assignment showed specific weaknesses in use of textwords and limiters. Performance was strongly related to a resident's ability to obtain the best evidence in answer to a clinical question (p = 0.011). Substantial improvement was shown on a second assignment after additional training. CONCLUSIONS: Our hands-on, performance-based program allows us to document trainees' progress in developing skills that will allow them to efficiently locate the best evidence available to inform their patient care decisions.

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