davidrothman.net

Well, I was pretty hard on Dean Giustini’s BMJ Editorial.
I have believed in the value of the dialectical process since long before I knew there was a term for it and have always believed that honest criticism serves the criticized, the critic, and those witnessing the process.
So I LOVE that Dean decided to […]

(This is the last post of 2007.  I’m not addicted to blogging.  I mean it.  I can stop any time I want!)
MedlinePlus has a new page on Health Literacy with links to lots of good stuff.

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A video from Google.
Testimonials from real patients and physicians on how the Internet has helped them with their health care treatment and delivery.

Above: Embedded video. If you are reading this via your feed aggregator, you may need to visit the site itself to view.
What bothers me about this video is that “the internet” isn’t […]

Erin McKean’s TED Talk on dictionaries is wonderful. She’s brilliant and funny and she expanded my vocabulary. Watch and enjoy.

More about McKean here and here.
Also be sure to check out McKean’s blog, Dictionary Evangelist.

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[soapbox]
On 7/21/2007, a Harris Poll was released which stated that in the last two years, the percentage of people who “have used the Internet to search for health-related information” has gone from 53% to 71%. This was based on a telephone poll of 1,010 adults between 7/10/07 and 7/16/07. The Harris report refers […]

Not new, but new to me.

The Newest Vital Sign is based on a nutrition label from an ice cream container. Patients are given the label and then asked 6 questions about how they would interpret and act on the information contained on the label.
Specifically, the patient is handed a copy of the nutrition […]

The Krafty Librarian asked for suggestions on teaching MEDLINE and Ratcatcher answered with a number of thoughts on the topic.
Among other things, Ratcatcher mentions this great self-paced tutorial from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

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Over at Women’s Health News, Rachel recently posted good advice and links on interpreting health research. There probably won’t be a lot new information here for a lot of medical librarians, but these would be gold for non-medical librarians. Resources like these could perhaps be pointed out every time a public librarian helps […]

Health Literacy is appallingly low in the U.S.
The Birmingham News reports on the “silent health epidemic” created by low health literacy, and mentions the Joint Commission white paper, ’What Did the Doctor Say?:’ Improving Health Literacy to Protect Patient Safety.
Wikipedia appallingly popular for health information
In a study from Envision Solutions titled Diving Deeper Into Online […]

The Krafty Librarian (Michelle Kraft) cracked me up with her comments regarding the article on Google as a diagnostic tool I posted about the other day.
Michelle posted a link on her blog to audio that summed up her reaction (and that of many healthcare information professionals) to the assertion from the article on Google […]

Several bloggers have already posted today about the new study from the Pew Internet and American Life project, Online Health Search 2006, but Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion includes an interview with Susannah Fox, Associate Director at Pew, who says of the study:
The biggest surprise for me was the decreasing percentage of health seekers (internet […]

Article from ars technica:
ETS [Educational Testing Service] has developed an ICT Literacy Assessment (test a demo version) that gives students short tasks (3-5 minutes, testing one particular skill) and long tasks (15 minutes, testing skills in combination) to complete on a computer. These include things like sifting through e-mail and developing accurate search queries for […]

Syracuse University is not only offering a course on Health Literacy, but they’ve announced it to S.U.’s LIS students:
HSHP is offering a new course in Spring 2007, HTS 311/600, HEALTH LITERACY, taught by Luvenia W. Cowart, Ed.D., RN, Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Fellow and Associate Professor of Practice in the College.
The undergraduate course is […]

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Wow, the NN/LM MCR news blog posted links today to two good reads:
Navigating Health: The Role of Health Literacy
Read this online PDF with a discussion on the importance and usefullness of health information. “Access to good, reliable information is the cornerstone of health literacy. Yet providing information,even good information, is often not enough. Somehow, we […]

Paul Pival at The Distant Librarian has an really interesting post that includes the following:
I think students who have only researched through their computer monitor have a very hard time understanding what they’re looking at. Through the monitor, a page is a page is a page, whether it be from a scholarly journal, a […]