Jim Anderson is lead PA-NP, Department of Orthopedics, Seattle Children's Hospital, Seattle, Washington, and a member of the JAAPA editorial board. Susan Klawansky is a medical librarian at Seattle Children's Hospital.
Welcome to the inaugural installment of JAAPA's first online only department: Ask a Librarian! Each month, we will address questions that PAs and other clinicians commonly ask medical librarians, with the goals of educating PAs about the various resources offered by medical libraries and of promoting collaboration between PAs and medical librarians. Clinicians often have access to a variety of health information tools and experts that they may not know about. This column highlights those resources and answers your questions about searching for information.
Do you have a question for a medical librarian? Send your question to ask.a.librarian.jaapa@gmail.com.
Question: Can you explain what a MeSH Heading is? I always hear that term, but I don't understand what it means. Is it something I need to know to do a good search?
Answer: MeSH is an acronym that stands for Medical Subject Heading. There are about 25,000 MeSH headings, which together form an index vocabulary for the database Medline. Every time a citation is added to Medline (and there are almost 20 million by now!), an indexer selects terms from the MeSH vocabulary that best represent the concepts in the article. Those MeSH terms then become part of that record and provide standardized terminology, regardless of the specific words used by the author. So even though you may not be aware of this indexing, it provides for much greater precision when searching. Whether you're using PubMed or Ovid to search Medline, the natural language you use will be translated into MeSH. For instance, you may search on ear infection, but you should also get results that discuss otitis media. That's the beauty and power of MeSH.
Question: I need to find an article about an exotic genetic condition of one of my patients. I work in a hospital in a rural and remote area in Montana, and while I have access to the Internet, I don't have access to a library or a librarian. How can I get help online finding an article, and when I find a reference, how can I get the full-text?
Answer: Are you in luck! Thanks to the Web, medical librarians are everywhere, floating around in the ether, just waiting for questions like this. As a matter of fact, if you look really quick right now, you might see one sitting there up on your shoulder! But seriously, if you have the Internet, you have a librarian. The National Network of Libraries of Medicine (a project of the US government) has offices in eight regions. To make direct contact with your region, no matter where you are in the United States, call (800) 338-7657 and you'll be able to reach a medical librarian in your region. These librarians can help you search, find resources in your area, and find articles that you need. You can read more about the National Network of Libraries of Medicine at http://nnlm.gov/.