DoctorSpeak: Health Literacy and Healthcare Professionals

Katherine Chew, the Research/Outreach Services & Mortuary Science, Center for Allied Health Programs, and Center for Bioethics Librarian for the Health Sciences Library at the University of Minnesota.  She created an hour-long presentation on health literacy, DoctorSpeak: Health Literacy and Healthcare Professionals, that is aimed at healthcare professionals of all types -- physician, nurse, therapist.  The presentation is available to anyone with a link and can also be embedded in a webpage.

The presentation gives an overview of the following:

• What is health literacy
• Why it is important
• The risks of low health literacy
• How to recognize low health literacy
• Best practices for communicating with patients
• Health literacy resources such as MedlinePlus, the NLM Drug Info Portal, and more ...

There is an array of attachments that can be used as part of a workshop or healthcare student instructional course, such a Medical Jargon Exercise and a Plain Language Checklist for Written Materials.  There is also a Health Literacy Resource List which includes resources from the CDC, NIH, AHRQ, Medicare/Medicaid and much more, as well as an extensive bibliography of references consulted for the presentation.

The presentation will be most relevant to healthcare providers in Minnesota, as Minnesota statistics are used to illustrate some health literacy issues but should be useful to all Midwest Chapter Members.

View the presentation.

This article first appeared in The Midline: Midwest Chapter MLA Newsletter (Issue 161 Summer 2022, Page 6).  Reposted to The WHSLA Blog with Katherine Chew's permission.  

Liz Suelzer Joins Advocate Aurora Health

The Advocate Aurora Library is happy to announce that Liz Suelzer is our new Application Support Analyst Sr.  Liz began her position on June 22, 2022.

Liz has 15 years of experience as a librarian, including positions in both academic  and academic medical settings.  At Advocate Aurora Library, Liz has the primary role in the library's efforts to implement, maintain, and improve our technologies.  She also has a key role in assisting Advocate Aurora Health team members with technological problems when accessing library resources and with liaising with Health Information Technology for library-related technologies.

We are excited to have Liz on board!

Submitted by Karen Hanus.

Naturalist-in-Residence

Wisconsin Public Libraries are getting all kinds of great press coverage this month!  

The Madison Public Library has launched a new program to help people learn more about their local environment.  Throughout September and October, naturalist John C. Newman will be leading a series of events and workshops in the Madison area.

Late summer book recommendations

Another summer is coming to an end and before you know it, school will be back in session.  Not for me though.  I'm done!  BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  Sorry, I'm still giddy at the thought of not having homework and getting to read whatever I want!  Here are a few books I've really enjoyed recently:

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

This is the story of the Trojan War told from the perspective of the women who lived through it.  I particularly enjoyed Penelope's increasingly disgruntled letters to her husband Odysseus, calling him out on the nonsense that kept him from coming home: "You met a monster. You met a witch. Cannibals broke your ships. A whirlpool ate your friends."

The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times by Jane Goodall and Douglas Carlton Abrams

The title caught my attention, and the book did not disappoint.  I liked it so much I bought my own copy.  It's nice to have it as a reference when all the bad things in the world feel overwhelming, and I highly recommend it.  The audio book is especially great, as you get to hear Ms.Goodall tell her own stories.

How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing by KC Davis, LPC

Behind my kitchen sink sits a decorative plate that I inherited from my Grandma.  It says, "Thank God for dirty dishes, they have a tale to tell.  While others may go hungry, we're eating very well."  This short book contains similar advice (and a phenomenal table of contents).  If your house isn't spotless, it's not some sort of moral failing on your part.  Life happens, and sometimes it gets messy.

She Come by It Natural by Sarah Smarsh

This collection of essays tells the story of Dolly Parton and how her work influenced so many people throughout her career.  There is so much more to this remarkable woman than her perfect make-up and towering blond wigs.

Have you read any good books lately?  Let us know in the comments, or email your recommendations (annie dot lipski at aah dot org) for a future blog post!

How I spent my summer vacation: Adult Space Camp

This summer I took a trip to Alabama, not to the Gulf Shores, or to see Civil Rights history, but to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, home of Space Camp. This has been on my bucket list for years. It was amazing to finally get there. 

My 3-day Adult Space Academy program included two simulated launch missions, rocket building, heat shield designing, a peek at items from the historical archives, and lots of cafeteria meals. 

My favorite parts were the simulated space missions. For the first, I was Flight Director back on earth helping run the show in Mission Control while half the team was flying to the International Space Station (ISS), exchanging crew, and returning to earth. I even took a picture of the first lines I had to read from one of the many binders we used: "Mission Control, this is Flight Director. Complete final pre-flight checks and prepare for lift-off of Discovery and her crew. The second mission? This time I was a scientist on a US moon base circa 2034. After using the automated scanner to check the health of the crew, we completed experiments, then prepared for a crew exchange. After leaving the moon, we flew back to earth and safely landed our vehicle. 

Other days had us building and shooting off our own rockets in the July Alabama heat and  testing a self-designed heat shield to keep a raw egg from cooking after being blasted by a 3,000 degree blowtorch for 3 minutes. Inside activities included a planetarium show and a presentation from an archivist who brought out prototypes of moon boots, a V-2 rocket timing mechanism, letters, and ISS food packets. 

I would recommend Space Camp/Adult Space Academy to anyone interested in space, or those looking for a weekend activity for themselves or their family. Besides programs for just kids or just adults, there are some where entire families can adventure together. 

Mission Control

Launching our rockets outside

Moon boot prototype

Health scanner on moon base

Behind the scenes

Corky, our heat shield, before it burst into flames

Multi-axis trainer

Inside a trailer where Apollo astronauts were sequestered after their return from the moon

A Saturn V on its side

Thanks to my co-worker, Annie, for nudging me to write this blog post. 

Anyone else want to share how they spent their summer vacation?

Sphagnum moss: a surprising medical treatment from WWI (and 900 years before that, too)

My family recently read a children's chapter book about a British mouse who becomes a hero during WWII called Umbrella Mouse.  It's a fictionalized story of course, but a major theme is the less well-known stories of the many animals who served in war including dogs, horses, and pigeons. 

Another interesting part of the story introduced the use of spiderwebs and sphagnum moss as wound dressings and/or alternatives to cloth bandages. Turns out sphagnum moss has been used for over 1,000 years to treat and dress wounds. It also has properties that help preserve bog bodies and even sequester carbon. A 2017 article in Smithsonian magazine delves deeply into this little green plant some call an "unlikely savior". 

The magic of interlibrary loan

If you're a frequent public library user, you've probably borrowed books through interlibrary loan (ILL) at some point.  Have you ever wondered how the process works?  WUWM 89.7 FM's Mayaan Silver takes you behind the scenes of the Milwaukee County Federated Library System in this interesting article.

Special thanks to WHSLA member Liz Suelzer for sending this our way! 

How to Take Advantage of Your Medical Librarian

Google can bring you back 100,000 answers, a librarian can bring you back the right one. — Neil Gaiman, Author

When most people think of librarians, they picture the stereotypical older woman with glasses and a bun who shushes them for talking too loudly. In the past, librarians were the keepers of information but have now evolved to become navigators of information. Although information available online seems to be unlimited, finding what you are looking for hidden within the noise of search results is not always easy. Further, high-quality online medical information is not always free. How can a medical librarian support doctors in training and throughout their careers?  Continue reading ...

This article by Michelle Kraft recently appeared on The NEJM Resident 360 Blog, offering useful advice on how Medical Librarians can help health care professionals:

• Improve Patient Care
• Provide Tailored Search Results
• Facilitate Research & Publishing
• Off-Site Consultation

Ascension Wisconsin Librarian and WHSLA Member Kellee Selden recommends sharing this with your own library constituents via a blog or newsletter.  This is a great piece of marketing for ALL Medical Librarians! 

The High Cost of Paywalls | Hannah Morris | TEDxUAMonticello

Posted Jun 14, 2022 To continue watching this talk, please pay... attention. Paywalls are a fact of life for those wishing to learn about world events. From the New York Times to your local paper, you've likely been asked to pay to keep reading. The problem, as debate coach and academic advisor Hannah Morris points out, is that real news sites often cost money to access, while propaganda sites are always free. In this intriguing talk, she explains the true cost of paywalls is an ignorant society. Filmed 5/8/22 in Fayetteville, AR. Hannah Morris is an Academic Advisor and coach of the debate team at the University of Arkansas. Her areas of research involve news media and access to factual information by the general public. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

I thought this was a very interesting TED Talk, not only because Libraries buy subscriptions in an attempt to mitigate some of those paywalls, but also because of the detrimental impact misinformation (which is FREE) has had on our society.    It's very well researched.  

Have a listen ...

The Librarians are "Silent but deadly!"

"Silent but deadly."  And entrusted with the power to save the known world.

How often do you see Librarians / Archivists given this much attention, power or credit?

Seems like there should be an Avengers movie about us ...  ;-)

Work Challenges and Inspiration among WHSLA Members: Featuring Kellee Selden

  

Michele: In March, I participated in a listening session with Erica Lake from the NNLM Region 6.

In preparation, I asked a few WHSLA Members for their candid answers to the following questions:

1. What challenges do you face with work?
2. What inspires you at work?
3. What CE would you like to see the NNLM work up for us, esp. on the hospital side.

With their permission, I am sharing the responses here on the WHSLA Blog in a series with the hope that WHSLA Members will get to know each other better, share some great ideas and best practices, and realize that we may be facing a lot of the same challenges in a post- (Are we there yet?) pandemic world.

Kellee Selden, MLIS, is currently Library Manager at Ascension Health Care in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

1) What challenges do you face with work?

• Finding the right person to get the job done.  For example, we need to locate an updated list of IPs for Ascension WI.  We have so many IT people and so much turnover that getting to the right person that has this information is a challenge.
• Communication flow.  We have a lot of great information that needs to get to the associates.  Finding the right avenues and getting it to flow properly is difficult.  It may work for a while but if someone leaves, the chain can be broken and disrupt the whole flow.
• Time for contract purchases and renewals.  Library contracts have to go through so many departments (Acquisitions, Contracting, IT, Admin, etc.) before it can be approved.  If it gets stuck in one department it can slow everything down and delay signature for weeks.

2) What inspires you at work?

• Finding the right information that helps an associate treat a patient, do a presentation, or answer a question.
• Merging contracts for the Ascension Librarians.  Getting better terms and conditions, making sure they are beneficial to us and saving money so we have the resources we need to treat patients, educate each other and provide the best service to everyone.
• I love working with students, interns and residents.  When I teach them they generally get excited to learn how to find information that will help them with a project or their practice.  They have such interesting topics and I learn from them too.
• The comradery with the other Ascension Librarians.  Before we merged into a national group, each librarian was on their own locally.  I was fortunate enough to work with Michele Matucheski before we went national.  Now we have over 20 librarians nationwide that collaborate.  We have regular meetings, share resources, help each other with projects etc.
• Having a voice at the table. Our Vice President, Michelle Heavens, works closely with me and the other co-manager to keep us relevant and involved with leadership on our behalf.  We have been invited to be a part of national Ascension Nursing Pillars programs, deciding on enterprise-wide Point-of-Care tools etc.  She is embedding us in Ascension on local, regional and national levels.  We are more powerful as a group versus individual librarians across the country.

3) What CE would you like to see the NNLM work up for us, especially on the hospital side.  MLA seems to be doing more CE for the academic librarians these days, and NNLM is doing more outreach to public libraries now.  So what would be most helpful for those of us still working in hospital libraries?

• This is not a CE, but a discussion I would appreciate.  How can hospital librarians and MLA work together to not just retain our jobs, but make executive leadership understand our value now and in the future.   As hospitals have lost money during the pandemic they will be making cuts.  MLA needs to help us make executive leadership understand that we don't just manage space but do value added research,
  save money on contract negotiations, right size budgets, do training so associates are using the resources efficiently, obtain ebooks, ejournals and other resources that are EBP for their departments, troubleshoot technology etc. If we collaborate and create a document that points all of this out perhaps we can release it to hospital leadership across the country.  This way they know our value and understand what we do for them, instead of them having misinformation and thinking we just take care of space and books.

Thank you, Kellee Selden, for sharing your work challenges and inspiration! 

If you would like to participate and share your answers to these 3 questions in a similar post for the WHSLA Blog, email Michele Matucheski with your answers and I'll make sure it gets posted.

Why Some Of Us Enjoy The Pain Of Spicy Foods (Short Wave podcast from NPR)

Short Wave, a daily science podcast from NPR, is one of my new favorite things to listen to. 

Check out this recent episode on why some people love spicy foods...even when they cause pain! 

What is monkeypox?

 What is monkeypox? A short video to bring in the loop.