Clinical Guides: Monash Health Library Newsletter: November 2021

Library News

Our PDF guide to Performing an advanced search in Ovid MEDLINE has been updated – bookmark, download, or print it to keep step-by-step guidance on hand. See our website for more help with searching.

International Pathology Day on 15th November was an opportunity to celebrate Monash Health’s hardworking Pathology teams. Our libraries featured displays and posters of curated pathology resources. (Photos courtesy of the Pathology team.)

Behind the scenes, we have been developing an institutional research repository to track and showcase research at Monash Health. The repository will be launched in the new year – watch this space!

New Books

Improving critical care survivorship: A guide to prevention, recovery, and reintegration
Comprised of four sections, the text presents interventions that can be used to improve patient outcomes and reduce the burden of post-intensive care syndrome across the arc of care, from the ICU to returning home.
White coat tales: Medicine’s heroes, heritage and misadventures
Presents intriguing stories that give historical context to what we do in medicine today – from the body's "holy bone" and how it got its name, to a surprising reason why gout seemed to be so prevalent several centuries ago, to the therapeutic misadventure that shortened the life of Eleanor Roosevelt.
Why we act: Turning bystanders into moral rebels
Based on cutting-edge research in social psychology and neuroscience, this book seeks to explain why we so often fail to act, and offers practical strategies to nudge us into being brave.
Diabetes insipidous in children: A pocket guide
Presents a detailed cross-section of paediatric patients, with different aetiologies of the disease and possible complications, to provide sensible management scenarios. An excellent resource for endocrinologists and other clinicians.

Library Favourites

Bookmark our list of tools to support clinical decisions for quick and easy access to decision support tools and clinical guidelines, drug information, clinical calculators, and more.

Looking for high-quality medical images to use in presentations or educational resources? Browse a large range of multimedia in the ClinicalKey database. Filter by clinical specialty or media type.

For World Diabetes Day on 14th November, we highlighted our Diabetes library guide which provides a variety of online resources such as guidelines, eBooks, and journals. View our list of Clinical Resource Guides to find curated resources on other clinical topics.

COVID-19

On 26th November, WHO classified Omicron (variant B.1.1.529) as a variant of concern – WHO’s latest update summarises the current knowledge of Omicron. In light of Omicron, the Australian Medical Association has called for an accelerated roll out of booster shots and a nationally coordinated approach to quarantine facilities.

The race between vaccination and evolution of COVID-19 variants, from the November issue of The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, discusses the risk of variants given global inequities in vaccine access. Global vaccine equity is also the subject of a 17-minute episode from the Doherty Institute’s podcast.

Selected COVID-19 articles:

This multicentre, long-term follow-up study from the UK found 4 different recovery phenotypes after hospital admission with COVID-19, and identified factors associated with poor recovery.
From Wales, this paper looks at how mental health nurses have adapted their care during COVID-19 restrictions to better maintain the well-being of patients with dementia.
A systematic review and meta-analysis of suicide, self-harm and suicidal ideation during COVID-19 identified main risk factors for suicidal ideation, including quarantine, exhaustion, and loneliness.
Focusing on COVID-19 in children, this article covers issues such as multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), household transmission by children, and vaccinating children.
Talking to parents about the COVID vaccine – a 25-minute podcast from NPS MedicineWise, discusses parents who are hesitant to have their children vaccinated and how clinicians can address their questions.

Just Published

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) has just published the 6th national report on the 21 Better Cardiac Care measures for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The mortality rate from cardiac conditions for Indigenous Australians fells by 28% between 2006 and 2019; however, it remains 1.6 times that for non-Indigenous Australians.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) recently released a list of COVID-19 rapid antigen self-tests that are approved in Australia, along with instructions for each and a comment on their clinical sensitivity.

The National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce has made new consensus recommendations for the care of children and adolescents, and pregnant and breastfeeding women, involving the use of pulse oximeters and casirivimab plus imdevimab (Ronapreve/REGENCOV).

Insights from Library Journals

Explore our range of journals on BrowZine.

Commenting on this systematic review on the effectiveness of interruptive prescribing alerts in EMRs, the editorial from BMJ Quality & Safety suggests that we “recalibrate our conceptualisation of clinical decision support systems”.
A cross-sectional study of ICU nurses from Tunisian hospitals assessed their perception of patient safety culture and identified improvement opportunities.
This US study found that patient complaint data revealed patterns of failures in the diagnostic process, noting that health systems can use complaint data to identify improvement opportunities.
In the new issue of Clinical Nutrition, the European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (ESPEN) puts forth a guideline on hospital nutrition.
Management of common psychiatric illnesses on pediatric medical floors provides an overview of delirium, somatic symptom and related disorders (SSRD), and paediatric medical traumatic stress (PMTS).
Patient-controlled analgesia in the emergency department is associated with increased patient satisfaction and opioid consumption, and decreased pain scores; however, there is insufficient evidence to support its widespread use.