New issue of Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing

The February issue of this freely accessible journal has just been published online.
Key research papers include:

• "Mature learners becoming registered nurses: a grounded theory model". This study describes how mature aged people reconstruct themselves as nursing students. Author: Vicki Drury.
• "The Australian diabetes educators’ skills and readiness for the tsunami of diabetes in the 21st century" by Pauline Hill, whose objective was to identify the knowledge, skills and practices of diabetes educators as this disease becomes more prevalent.
• "Palliative care in a multicultural society: a challenge for western ethics" by Keri Chater. This paper examines the notion of truth telling and its place in palliative care nursing with a particular focus on nursing people from minority cultures.

Child Protection Report

Child Protection Australia 2007-2008 has been released by the AIHW this month. It provides comprehensive information on state and territory child protection and support services. The report contains data for 2007-08, as well as trend data on child protection notifications, investigations and substantiations, children on care and protection orders and children in out-of-home care.

In a summary of findings, the authors state, "With the many differences in the way each state or territory handles and reports child protection issues, one must interpret relevant statistical information with caution. But, on balance, the trend is that nationally, substantiations, and the number and rates of children under care and protection orders or in out-of-home care have been on the rise. 2007–08 represents an anomaly, as substantiations fell for the first time in ten years. At this stage it is difficult to tell whether this decrease will continue or not. The available evidence shows very clearly that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are verrepresented in all of these areas."

Dengue Fever in Queensland

Queensland Health has updated the information on Dengue Fever on it's website after it was reported that there is an outbreak of the disease in Cairns and Townsville. Dengue is a viral disease transmitted by specific mosquitoes and found in most tropical areas of the world including north Queensland, Australia. The disease can cause a range of symptoms, some of which can be severe and patients should seek medical attention for treatment. There are a number of ways to protect yourself from Dengue, primarily you should avoid being bitten by dengue mosquitoes and get rid of dengue mosquito breeding sites around your house, yard or business premises.

Understanding Evidence-based Healthcare

A free online workshop titled “Understanding Evidence-based Healthcare: A Foundation for Action” , is being offered by the US Cochrane's Centre Consumers United for Evidence-based Healthcare. It is designed to help consumer advocates understand the fundamentals of evidence-based healthcare concepts and skills. Registration is open and free of charge

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Performance Framework

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has released a new report today: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Performance Framework 2008 report: detailed analyses. This report contains detailed analyses underlying the summary data presented in the policy report Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Performance Framework 2008 report, produced by the Department of Health and Ageing. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Performance Framework (HPF) is designed to provide the basis to monitor the impact of the National Strategic Framework for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health (NSFATSH) and inform policy analyses, planning and program implementation. The HPF consists of 70 measures covering three tiers: health status and outcomes, determinants of health and health systems performance.

Growing number of cancer cases

The number of new cancer cases diagnosed in Australia each year passed the 100,000 mark for the first time in 2005 and the number of new cases in 2008 is estimated to be over 108,000, according to a report released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. 'Cancer already has a major impact on the health system and this looks set to continue. The number of cancer-related hospital admissions is projected to increase by over 23,000 per year in the short term, and this doesn't include cancer-related sessions in the outpatient setting,' said Ms Christine Sturrock of the Institute's Health Registers and Cancer Monitoring Unit.
Two recent reports from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Cancer in Australia: an overview, 2008 and National Bowel Cancer Screening Program monitoring report 2008, look at the problems to be faced with the increasing number of cancer diagnoses.

In the Wake of the Garling Report

In the latest issue of the Medical Journal of Australia, a number of articles look at health reform in NSW in relation to the Garling Report. Martin B Van Der Weyden takes a humourous twist to the serious problem of redressing the imbalance between community expectations and the capacity of the hospital system to meet those expectations. A second article in this issue, "Reforming New South Wales public hospitals: an assessment of the Garling inquiry" states the real challenge is effective implementation. This will require "courage and political will (not evident in recent years); outstanding political, clinical and community leadership; open discussion; and community engagement to an extent not previously seen". Also in the issue, Stewart and Dwyer discuss the implementation of the Garling Report offers real hope for rescuing the New South Wales public hospital system.

Will more medical places result in more rural GP's?

Australia is investing very large sums of money in expanding both the number of medical places available at university and the number of medical schools around the country. By 2012 there will be almost 3000 graduates a year : up from just over 1300 in 2005. The expectation is that this increase in domestic medical graduates will solve our medical workforce issues. However, there is little evidence to suggest that this will result in more doctors for rural and remote areas of Australia, according to Dr Kim Webber, CEO of Rural Health Workforce Australia (RHWA).
Press release
Discussion paper
(Reposted from GWAHS Libraries Blog)

News Online

Sometimes you need to know the latest information hitting the newswires, or want to follow up on a story you partially heard on the car radio as you were dashing to work. Here are some useful sites for just that:
Medline Plus News - From the NIH in the US, a precis of all the top international health stories updated daily.
Australian Newspapers Online - from the National Library of Australia, has links to just about every newspaper in the country - search by town or title.
Fairfax News Store - search from 1990 all Fairfax publications (including the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age). There's a small charge for full-text but searching is free.
CNN Health - the latest International (American) health stories.
ABC's Health News - topical health stories on the good old ABC website.
Health news from The Australian newspaper.

CINAHL has changed!

The most popular database for researching Nursing and Allied Health information, CINAHL, has undergone a recent change in platform, moving to Ebsco from Ovid. You will notice quite a difference in the way you search - some of the differences are good and some will take a bit of getting used to. Please contact your library if you'd like help using this new interface and we'll be happy to help out. Access CINAHL through CIAP.

Top 10 Health Search Engines

Number 1: The hands-down winner for best Health Search Engine of 2008 is Mednar. It offers access to an array of databases that are not mined by other health search engines and features a dependable email alert service that enables users to keep up on the lates publications on the medical topics of their choice.
Number 2: GoPubMed has actually been around a few years, but made this list because it is such a superb tool. It is a useful complement to PubMed proper and also features a mediated service that enables users to send emails to researchers and authors.
Number 3: WorldWideScience.org is a global science gateway featuring English language materials produced by scientists throughout the world.
Number 4: Health Sciences Online is a multi-institutional, international effort to put as much valuable information onto the Web as possible and is more about disseminating information about best practices than facilitating basic and clinical research.
Number 5: ScanGrants is a useful, free tool for those in the health sciences looking for grants and scholarships in their fields. Researchers depend on money for everything from lab equipment to clerical help and grants are their lifelines to such funding.
Number 6: SearchMedica is a useful midway point between the consumer level MedlinePlus and the sometimes overpowering authoritativeness of PubMed. It features links to a wide variety of trade publications in medicine, has it's own search tips newsletter and has a number of suggested searches.
Number 7: Vadlo is brought to you by two biology scientists who wish to make it easier to locate biology research related information on the web. Vadlo search engine caters to all branches of life sciences and allows users to search within five categories: Protocols, Online Tools, Seminars, Databases and Software. It makes the list because it does what no other medical search engine seems to do. It makes available useful PowerPoint presentations that might otherwise be relegated to wasteful, indeed heartbreaking obscurity. It also has some great cartoons!
Number 8: NextBio allows you to search, compare your data with other public studies and then collaborate and securely share your data. NextBio's mission is to make the world's life sciences information universally accessible and their goal is to empower researchers and clinicians to make new discoveries in science, find new and better cures to diseases, and work more collaboratively.
Number 9: LalisioLiterature makes the list because it is an attractive gateway to open access literature, and with the passage of mandatory open access legislation worldwide, it will more and more affect all our lives for the better and render more and more valuable medical literature searchable.
Number 10: Yottalook This is a top-drawer image search engine and is a model of search engine design in general. You can search for medical images by type of imaging technology used (e.g., CT, MRI) and Publication Date, First Author, Last Author, Journal and so on.

Complementary Medicines

Two important research reports on the complementary medicines information needs of Australian consumers and health professionals are now available from the National Prescribing Service (NPS). The NPS research highlights the gap between the widespread and increasing use of complementary medicines and the limited evidence available to justify much of this use.
It also shows a major disconnect between the consumer perception of complementary medicines as “natural” and “risk-free” and the reality that these medicines contain pharmacologically active substances that can cause adverse effects, albeit less frequently with conventional medicines.