Book Helpdesk

Report of the AAMC Task Force on Industry Funding of Medical Education

  The Task Force on Industry Funding of Medical Education has issued its final report for consideration in June by the AAMC Executive Council. The task force included institutional leaders; faculty; residents; students from the AAMC governance; CEOs from the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device industries; ethicists; and public representatives. It was funded by the Josiah Macy, Jr Foundation.

See also this April 29 editorial from the New York Times: Should They Send a Thank-You Note? ; The bloggers are also commenting on the AAMC report ;
See also  Continuing Education in the Health Professions: Improving Healthcare Through Lifelong Learning (Macy Foundation)

The report: Association of American Medical Colleges. Report of the AAMC Task Force on Industry Funding of Medical Education to the AAMC Executive Council.  For consideration, June 18-19, 2008. Washington: AAMC, 2008.

From the report:
The Report acknowledges the new policy directions being implemented in many medical schools and teaching hospitals to address industry support of medical education, and it urges all academic medical centers to accelerate their adoption of policies that better manage, and when necessary, prohibit, academic-industry interactions that can inherently create conflicts of interest and undermine standards of professionalism. Although the charge to the Task Force was focused on funding from the pharmaceutical and device industries, institutional policies on conflicts of interest should be comprehensive and encompass providers of equipment and services as well.  Concomitantly, industry should voluntarily discontinue those practices that compromise professionalism as well as public trust.

More on AAMC Financial Conflicts of Interest in Academic Medicine

---

Distance Education: The Benefits of Spinal Manipulation

  Here is an online course developed by Dr. Kim Ross of the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College (CMCC). The course description:

This presentation looks at clinical trials of spinal manipulation to discrepancies in the literature, and mechanisms by which manipulation produces its clinical effect. What you will find is that some of the mechanistic assumptions of spinal manipulation need to be revisted. Spinal manipulation is a mechanical intervention. But one cannot discount the possibilty of a neurological mechanism of action.

The course offers three hours of CE credits and is available free of charge to members of both CMCC and the Ontario Chiropractic Association. Others may register for $25. Funding was provided by the Ontario Chiropractic Association and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care for their financial support.

Lonely Little Lamp

Rejection. Rain and wind. Sad music. The fleeting caress of the replacement. The dying light and the garbage strewn street.  And then, the accusation …

Responsible Conduct of Research: online courses

  
This series of free online courses from Columbia University promote RCR education as a central responsibility for any institution involved in research. There are six courses:

COURSE 1: Conflicts of Interest   [Foundation Text]
COURSE 2: Mentoring    [Foundation Text]
COURSE 3: Responsible Authorship and Peer Review  [Foundation Text]
COURSE 4: Research Misconduct   [Foundation Text]
COURSE 5: Collaborative Science   [Foundation Text]
COURSE 6: Data Acquisition and Management  [Foundation Text]

Every course includes the following components: Introduction;  Case Study;   Q & A;  Annotated Case;  Foundation Text;  Resources;  Conclusion

Credits: This site was produced by the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching & Learning (CCNMTL) in collaboration with the Columbia University Center for Bioethics and the Columbia University Office for Responsible Conduct of Research.

ROAR & DOAR: Registry / Directory of Open Access Respositories

  I started to look for open access repositories and was getting absolutely overwhelmed until I discovered ROAR and DOAR.
See also eScholarship Respository (California Digital Library)

Directory of Open Access Repositories – OpenDOAR
OpenDOAR is an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories. Each OpenDOAR repository has been visited by project staff to check the information that is recorded here. This in-depth approach does not rely on automated analysis and gives a quality-controlled list of repositories.
United States    Canada    Search or Browse for Repositories     FAQ   
Example: Health and Medicine/English/Multimedia

Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR)
We are promoting open access to the research literature pre- and post-peer-review through author self-archiving in institutional eprint archives. Open access to research maximises research access and thereby also research impact, making research more productive and effective.
Search     Google Custom Search    Help (WIKI)

eScholarship Respository (California Digital Library)

   Here is an Open Access resource I just discovered, from the California Digital Library (CDL).

The repository is a service of the eScholarship initiative of the California Digital Library, and is an open-access publishing platform that offers UC [Universiy of California] departments, centers, and research units direct control over the creation and dissemination of the full range of their scholarship, including pre-publication materials, journals and peer-reviewed series, postprints, and seminar papers. These materials are freely available to the public online. As of today there are  21,040 papers in the repository.  Advanced search   

Sample paper:
Kravitz RL, Duan N, Braslow J. Evidence-based medicine, heterogeneity of treatment effects, and the trouble with averages. Milbank Q. 2004;82(4):661-87.
(View all articles with evidence-based in the title.)

The 10 Most Popular Papers in the eScholarship Repository; The 10 Most Popular Recent Papers in the eScholarship Repository

Other services:
eScholarship Editions:  includes almost 2000 books from academic presses on a range of topics, including art, science, history, music, religion, and fiction.
Mark Twain Project Online: a groundbreaking digital critical edition of Mark Twain’s works that applies innovative search, display and citation technology to more than four decades of archival research by expert editors at the Mark Twain Project.

Chiropractic Treatment Tables

 This article [available free online] was just published in the March 2008 issue of the Journal of Chiropractic Medicine:

Evans MW, Campbell A, Husbands C, Breshears J, Ndetan H, Rupert R. Cloth-covered chiropractic treatment tables as a source of allergens and pathogenic microbes. J Chiropr Med 2008; 7(1): 34-38.
Objective: Vinyl chiropractic tables have been found to harbor pathogenic bacteria, but wiping with a simple disinfection agent can significantly reduce the risk of bacteria. The aim of this study was to assess the presence of microbes and other allergens or pathogens on cloth chiropractic tables.
Methods: Cloth-covered tables in a chiropractic college teaching clinic were selected. Samples were taken from the facial piece and hand rests with RODAC plates containing nutrient agar, followed by confirmatory testing when indicated.
Results: Numerous microbacteria strains were found, including Staphylococcus aureus and Propionibacterium. Allergen-producing molds, including Candida, were also found.
Conclusion: Cloth tables were shown to contain pathogenic microbacteria and allergens. The chiropractic profession should establish an infection control protocol relevant to treatment tables and discard use of cloth-covered treatment tables in this process.

Last year the same authors published this article:
Evans MW, Jr., Breshears J, Campbell A, Husbands C, Rupert R. Assessment and risk reduction of infectious pathogens on chiropractic treatment tables. Chiropr Osteopat 2007; 15(1):8. [Open Access]

And here is another one by two of the authors:
Evans MW, Breshears J. Attitudes and behaviors of chiropractic college students on hand sanitizing and treatment table disinfection: Results of initial survey and focus group. JACA Online 2007 May-June;44(4):13-23.

Check both of these articles out here, as well as this one:
Bifero AE, Prakash J, Bergin J. The role of chiropractic adjusting tables as reservoirs for microbial diseases. Am J Infect Control April 2006; 34(3):155-157.

Also, have a look at this post on Salami Publishing.

IN-CAM Outcomes Database

  Here is a terrific new resource from IN-CAM, the Canadian Interdisciplinary Network for Complementary and Alternative Medicine Research, an interdisciplinary, collaborative research network, created to foster excellence in CAM research in Canada.

The goal of this database is to include practical and accessible information on outcome measures within a framework of domains that are important to CAM researchers.

Click on the above image to view the Framework of Outcome Domains. Click on a domain and see a list of the measures for that domain. Each measure includes an Extended Details tab.

Here are the Physical Domain measures; view the entry for the Neck Disability Index; click on the green Extended Details tab for more information. (Speaking of the NDI, check out this PubMed search, and some Google Scholar citations to articles that have cited the 1991 Vernon/Mior article.)

There is a great deal of useful information in this resource, and I look forward to its development.

Holidaying Penguins (the BBC, April 1, 2008)