Module 2

You used an electronic index, a guideline index, and a web search engine to retrieve information relevant to your clinical problem. Compare and contrast your results. Which resources were useful/ not useful for your information retrieval task, and why? Identify some alternative strategies for retrieving relevant information - would context relevant information retrieval be useful?

I obtained different information with each different search engine. PubMed retrieved a huge number of resources on very specific topics, there was a lot of information to look through but once a searched around for a little while I was able to find information that was exactly what I was looking for. The NGC search retrieved so very good information as well, but for my topic is was a little more generalized than I was looking for but it provided a lot of good background and current clinical practice guidelines. The Google search provided some new information that was very relevant to my topic I found HRSA research that may be buried in my PubMed results somewhere, but was easily found using Google, most of the other information retrieved on Google was not quite what I was looking for and wouldn’t hold up to academic standards. Using the variety of search resources increased the amount of information available to choose from and each different resource provided something that the others did not.

Module 2

1. What features in your chosen reference management software can be used to sort, classify, and otherwise organize references? Describe software functionality that allows you to better organize and share information for efficient retrieval and use.

I chose to use Endnote as my reference management software. Endnote has several features that are very helpful in organizing and finding your references. You can build different libraries or groups for different searches you may be doing to have all of the articles sorted and saved together. You can then make notes about each article as you read it that will save with the article in endnote so that when you go back to look through the information you know more about why you picked that article and what it discussed. Once the articles are in your endnote library, endnote will go out and search for full text copies of the articles and if they are available endnote will download them and save them within the library so that all of the information you need is within one folder. Another good endnote feature is the ability to further fine tune your search questions by using the search function in endnote

Module 2

1. Describe your clinical problem and choice of electronic index. How did the index facilitate (or impede) your ability to construct an efficient search? How time consuming was your search? Would there be barriers to using the index in daily practice?

My clinical problem that I chose to investigate was substance abuse treatment in HIV-positive women. I chose to use PubMed as my search index because I have seen it used a lot this semester by faculty and have not have much experience with it in the past. The “Limits” tab in PubMed really helped me to fine tune my search. I was able to select only adults, females, articles published within the past 5 years, and also my keywords of HIV, women, and substance abuse treatment. Even with all of these search terms I came up with quite a few articles to look through. The search engine was easy to use and I was able to complete my search fairly quickly, but finding the specific information I was looking for took more time. The only barrier I can see to using PubMed in daily practice is the amount of information it has available is so vast. The practitioner would have to be very skilled in using exact search terms to find the information that would really be helpful in clinical practice.

Module 1

My name is Kelly Roscheck. I am in the distance Family Nurse Practitioner program. I live in Boise, Idaho. As a graduate level nurses it’s important to know about information management because gathering data is how we are going to make decisions and we need to know how to find and organize that information in order to make the best decisions for our patients and our practice. We need to know where to find clinical information and how to use technology to better serve the needs of our clients.

I work as a float nurse between many different departments and all of these different departments use a different computer charting system. My hospital recently began using a new charting system that was supposed to “work for anywhere in the hospital” and so far that has not happened. On a day-to-day basis I use 5 different charting systems all of them utilize structured documentation. We are encouraged to use the structured documentation option whenever possible, it saves time for the patient care staff and allows for easier chart reviews and performance improvement data gathering.