Trip Database Blog

Interventions for promoting information and communication technologies adoption in healthcare professionals, a new Cochrane systematic review.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the authors conclude:

“There is very limited evidence on effective interventions promoting the adoption of ICTs by healthcare professionals. Small effects have been reported for interventions targeting the use of electronic databases and digital libraries. The effectiveness of interventions to promote ICT adoption in healthcare settings remains uncertain, and more well designed trials are needed.”

If you want to share a good experience at the Mayo Clinic, now you can share it with friends and contacts via Facebook and other social networks and become a “fan”.

Click here for further info.

It’s just over 6 weeks old and TRIP Answers seems to have taken off.

Since January 1st we’re seen the following:

• Had over 26,000 visits
• Added over 350 new Q&As, all quality marked
• Main users from UK, USA, Canada, Australia and Spain
• We’ve been approached by 3 large organisations looking to add our content to their sites

The top 3 Q&As viewed are:

• A 38-year-old lady who is a smoker is having amenorrhoea on the progesterone only pill. She has a strong family history of osteoporosis. What are the current guidelines/evidence on investigations for this lady; i.e. when should she have a bone scan or plasma oestordiols?
• What are the expected disease prevalences in wales for the purpose of the New Contract registers (i.e. CHD/LVD, CVA/TIA, diabetes, asthma, COPD, epilepsy cancer, mental health, hypothyroidism.)
• I have a 17-year-old female patient, normotensive, non-smoker, not overweight, with 21day heavy cycle; I’d like to start her on oral contraceptive pills. Her mother had proven DVT aged 45 on HRT when no other risk factors present. Should I do thrombophilia screen before prescribing oral contraception?

We’ve got a slight issue with the Tag Cloud of Clinical Uncertainty so we’re not pushing that part of the site yet. Aside from that, the site is going pretty well and seems stable. We’re planning a slight redesign to help usability, but again nothing too major.

So far, I’d give the site 9/10!

A great news story on the BBC news website, it starts:

“Before take-off, every pilot needs to brief their crew about what to expect.

At the end of each flight, they talk briefly about what went right, what went wrong and what could be done better.

Pilots say this brief and debrief system has reduced errors and made flying safer, and a growing number of NHS medics think this system should be adapted – to make surgery safer.”

Click here to read the full story.

A great new resource from Scotland has been brought to my attention – Hands on Scotland – and we’ve added to TRIP patient information. The site reports:

“The HandsOnScotland Toolkit is an online resource for anybody working with children and young people.

This website is designed to help you make a difference to children and young people’s lives, by
giving you tools to respond helpfully when they are troubled.

It is a one-stop shop for practical information and techniques on how to respond helpfully to children and young people’s troubling behaviour, build up their self-esteem and promote their positive mental wellbeing.”

Also, last week I posted that I’d updated the British Association of Dermatologists guidelines. Unfortunately, I forgot about their patient information leaflets, which I’ve now updated. These should be fully searchable on Monday morning.

Not related to TRIP, but two blog posts relating to yesterday’s inauguration:

• President’s speech meets Wordle.
• A bird’s eye view.

Blog’s can give perspective that mainstream media often avoids or is too slow to get to! This follows on quickly from twitter being quicker to report on the recent plane crash in the Hudson.

Whether speed is always crucial or even welcome is another issue. I don’t remember, as a child/teenager, being too bothered by there being no internet, 3/4 TV channels (that’s ‘3 to 4’ not 0.75 ) and a hand-delivered newspaper!

TRIP has a long-standing interest in answering clinical questions.

We’re wondering if the large number of users of TRIP can be used to help us with clinical Q&As. We aim to test this over the coming weeks, starting with this difficult question:

• What creates the ‘popping’ when you ‘click’ your joints?

As you will see (the link is below) the existing answer highlights a high degree of uncertainty. What we want people to do is to read the Q&A and leave suggestions via this blog or via the comment form at the bottom of the answer.

To see the existing answer click here.

Around 5 years ago I had the pleasure in visiting the College of Medicine at King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I visited to present and help run a EBM conference. Since that time I have kept a keen interest in their work (and I’m an ‘international advisor’ to the group). They have recently released a new website (click here) which you may enjoy.

As part of our monthly update of TRIP we have just added 587 new articles.

In addition we have ‘refreshed’ the content of the following providers due to URL changes:

• British Association of Dermatologists.
• Crest (from Northern Ireland) has merged with another organisation – new URLs and new name GAIN.
• European Society of Cardiology.