Window on WHSLA - from WHSLA 2020 President Holly Egebo

Dear WHSLA members,

I am Holly Egebo, THE new WHSLA President. You are looking at the view from the Library window atop Aurora BayCare Medical Center. In Green Bay, on this sunny day. It’s fun to say Welcome to the Year 2020!!

The view from my library at Aurora BayCare Medical Center

I am confident that for each member of WHSLA,  this will be a year of positive change!

Looking back a little to October 2019--what a remarkable time the Midwest Chapter/MLA WHSLA,and SWHSL Conference was! One of my favorite moments of the conference was the keynote speaker MK Czerwiec, RN, MA aka Comic Nurse.  I found her talk to be energetic and the process she uses to create her comic strips very creative!  As a result--I drew my first comic frame. Have any of you ever tried this?  Would you like to? It takes only a few minutes. Don’t judge yourself. We Librarians run into hundreds of situations that would translate supremely well into a bit of humor in this statement of art!

Time marched on.  Suddenly it was Halloween, then Thanksgiving came and the December Holidays, which brings us to now.  Forging ahead, what lies beyond the cold snowy month of January 2020?

1. Two WHSLA Board meetings are on now my calendar--Thursday April 9 at 10:00 –12:00 Friday November 13 also at 10:00-12:00.  I will announce the WHSLA General Business meeting in a later blog.

2. Take advantage of the all the benefits WHSLA membership offers-- 

• Eligibility for professional development grants ($500 each)
• Weekly blog
• Networking with other Wisconsin health science librarians
• WHSLA Wisdom Chats
• Free access to selected MLA webinars

3. What are you thinking, wishing, hoping for 2020 for our WHSLA chapter? For your libraries and for yourselves as Librarians?  I would really like to know!

Be bold and share your plans and dreams on this blog or you can email me at holly egebo at aurora dot org

Have a wonderful winter!

Mental Health Facts on Refugees, Asylum Seekers, & Survivors of Forced Displacement Worldwide

Just a taste of the useful info you can find in the Disaster Information Management Resource Center and DisasterLit, a database for disaster medicine and public health:

Mental Health Facts on Refugees, Asylum-seekers, and Survivors of Forced Displacement

Source: American Psychiatric Association (APA)

Date Published: 11/2019

Format: PDF

Annotation: This four-page fact sheet details how most of the world's 70.8 million refugees, asylum seekers, unaccompanied minors, and other survivors of forced displacement will not receive needed mental health care due to scarcity of services and stigma against mental health care. It discusses systems of care for the mental health of refugees and asylum seekers, and strengths and protective factors common to refugees and asylum-seekers. [less]

URL: https://www.psychiatry.org/File%20Library/Psychiatrists/Cultural-Competency/Mental-Health-Disparities/Mental-Health-Facts-for-Refugees.pdf

Type: Fact Sheet

ID: 20453. From: Disaster Lit®a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

A message from your friendly neighborhood WHSLA Professional Development Co-Coordinators

Hello WHSLA,

As you may have seen, MLA has released the dates and descriptions for their planned webinars for 2020.  This year they will be updating this list throughout the year so we will be sending out multiple surveys as webinars are added.   

As WHSLA Professional Development Co-Coordinators, we are reaching out to all of you to help gather some information as we decide which webinars should receive priority for GMR funding applications on behalf of WHSLA. 

Our goal is to apply for funding to host the webinars with the highest amount of interest first.  Since we can only apply for funding once per quarter as WHSLA, the secondary goal is to help facilitate code sharing with other organizations that may receive funding and have extra codes available since we are now able to share codes. 

You can see the list of the webinars and their descriptions here: 2020 MLA Webinars.  

Please take a moment to read the descriptions and then take the brief survey here:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/7LZDBWH

Once you’ve read through the descriptions, the survey should only take you about 2 minutes. 

Thank you,

Dora Davis and Gwendolyn Shorter

WHSLA Professional Development Co-Coordinators

Professional Development Award Report: Midwest Chapter/MLA Megan Olson

I was fortunate enough to win a $500.00 stipend to help cover my costs, so I could attend 2019's WHSLA/SWHSL/Midwest Chapter MLA.  The conference being in Milwaukee, WI, allowed me to visit the Bronze Fonz and stop at Kopps while also learning the latest greatest in medical librarianship. 

I’ll be honest, I ended up taking more away from the conference than I had even hoped. The highlights:

• I won the jackpot and received a free membership to MLA. Seriously, I went out and bought a lottery ticket because I was feeling so lucky.     
• Drinking adult beverages at the hotel bar with fellow librarians. Along with my coworkers, Melinda Orebaugh and Eileen Severson, I was able to visit  with Julia Esparza, MLA president,  who is a hoot. 
• MK Czerwiec, RN, MA, uses comics in healthcare. You can read more about her at www.comicnurse.com, My main takeaway is that comics are a powerful tool that can be used to convey highly dense important information in high stress situations. I need to investigate further to see if anyone is currently using comics to create patient ed hand-outs. I am familiar with the graphic novels such as Lighter Than My Shadow by Katie Green or the Medikidz series, but I am wondering if anyone is creating one or two page hand-outs on health topics. Also, Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant has been added to my to-read list.  
• Evening at the Harley Museum.  It was a super fun evening networking with fellow librarians and seeing how Harley’s have changed over the years. This must be a dream job for any archivist. Oh, and the gift shop isn’t too shabby.   
• I was completely fascinated with the Social Determinants of Health: From the Patient to the Community and Beyond panel of speakers. The future of healthcare really is going to be going where the patients are. I can’t recall, which group is doing it, but they have had positive outcomes with centering pregnancy and centering parenting appointments, which are group driven visits. 

Toodles - 

Megan Olson