Emergency preparedness in physicians' offices:

PubMed:

"Physicians' Offices"[Mesh] OR office[title]
AND
"Emergencies"[Mesh] OR "Emergency Treatment"[Mesh] OR "Disaster Planning"[Mesh] OR preparedness[tiab]

OR

office[title]
AND
"Emergencies"[Mesh] OR "Emergency Treatment"[Mesh] OR "Disaster Planning"[Mesh] OR preparedness[tiab]
NOT
jsubsetd[text]

EMBASE:

office.ti.
AND
exp emergency/ OR exp emergency treatment/ OR exp disaster planning/ OR preparedness.mp.
NOT
dent*.ti.

Soft Tissue Augmentation

Ovid Medline:

(soft adj3 tissue adj3 augment*).mp. OR (tissue adj3 augment*).mp. OR filler*.mp.

OR

exp Cosmetic Techniques/ OR exp Dermatologic Agents/ OR exp Rejuvenation/ OR exp Skin Aging/
AND
exp Biocompatible Materials/ OR exp Viscosupplements/ OR exp Viscosupplementation/ OR "Prostheses and Implants"/ OR exp Acrylic Resins/ OR exp Biopolymers/ OR exp Glycosaminoglycans/ OR exp Absorbable Implants/ OR exp Extracellular Matrix Proteins/


EMBASE:

(soft adj3 tissue adj3 augment*).mp. OR (tissue adj3 augment*).mp. OR filler*.mp.

OR

exp *esthetic surgery/ OR exp *dermatological agent/ OR exp *rejuvenation/ OR *cutaneous parameters/
AND
exp biomaterial/ OR exp viscosupplement/ OR exp viscosupplementation/ OR exp biodegradable implant/ OR exp acrylic acid resin/ OR exp biopolymer/ OR exp glycosaminoglycan/ OR exp scleroprotein/

Epidemics and disasters

PubMed:

"Disease Outbreaks"[Mesh] OR "Disasters"[Mesh] OR "Earthquakes"[Mesh] OR "Floods"[Mesh] OR "Avalanches"[Mesh] OR "Landslides"[Mesh] OR "Tidal Waves"[Mesh] OR "Tsunamis"[Mesh] OR "Volcanic Eruptions"[Mesh] OR "Cyclonic Storms"[Mesh] OR "Structure Collapse"[Mesh] OR "Explosions"[Mesh]

EMBASE:

exp epidemic/ OR exp disaster/ OR exp earthquake/ OR exp flooding/ OR exp avalanche/ OR exp landslide/ OR exp tsunami/ OR exp volcano/ OR exp volcanic ash/ OR exp hurricane/ OR tornado/ OR exp structure collapse/ OR exp explosion/ OR exp nuclear accident/ OR aircraft accident/


PsycInfo:

DE "Epidemics" OR DE "Pandemics" OR DE "Disasters" OR DE "Natural Disasters"

Communicating with distant locations

PubMed:

"Telemedicine"[Mesh] OR "Videoconferencing"[Mesh] OR "Radio"[Mesh] OR "Cellular Phone"[Mesh] OR "Telecommunications"[NoExp] OR "Internet"[Mesh] OR "Satellite Communications"[Mesh] OR "Wireless Technology"[Mesh]

OR

"Communication"[Mesh] OR "Mass Media"[Mesh]) AND ("Developing Countries"[Mesh] OR "Name of Country"[Mesh]


EMBASE:

exp telecommunication/ OR exp mobile phone/ OR exp social media/ OR exp telephone/ OR exp text messaging/ or exp videoconferencing/ or exp wireless communication/

OR


(exp interpersonal communication/ OR exp mass medium/) AND (exp developing country/ OR exp Name of Country/)


PsycInfo:

DE "Telemedicine" OR DE "Virtual Teams" OR DE "Teleconferencing" OR DE "Telecommunications Media" OR DE "Radio" OR DE "Telephone Systems" OR DE Television Advertising" OR DE "Cellular Phones" OR DE "Social Media" OR DE "Mobile Devices"

OR

(DE "Communications Media" OR DE "Mass Media" OR DE Electronic Communication") AND DE "Developing Countries"

How to find the date coverage of databases

According to the PRISMA guidelines, you should report the date coverage of the databases which you used for your search. But where can you find them?

PubMed:

Available on the Fact Sheet: Medline

Ovid databases:
Date coverage is displayed after the name of the database in the Search area.
This is located just above the place where you type in your search terms.

If you click on the Change link above the database name, you can see date coverage information for all of the databases available in your subscription.


EBSCO databases:
If you click on Choose databases, next to each database is a little yellow quote bubble. If you mouseover the quote bubble, there is information about the database, and sometimes it includes the date coverage, but not always.

CINAHL and PsycInfo display date coverage information; Medline and ERIC do not.

Next place to check?

Google the name of the vendor and database and look for an informational page.

For instance, I googled: ebsco medline with full text

The first result was an EBSCO website with information about the database, including a statement about date coverage.

Proquest databases: click on the Databases link at the top of the page (to the right of Basic Search and Advanced search). Most databases listed have a date range after the title of the database.

Exploding Mental Disorders in PsycInfo

Probably you've already noticed that if you explode a term in EBSCO's PsycInfo, it only explodes down by one level. In other words, if your term's narrower terms have any narrower terms, those grandchildren will not be included in the explosion.

This is a real pain when you're trying to find information about all mental disorders. You've gotta chase down every last narrower term and add it to your search.

It's time consuming, and of course particularly galling because it's not a problem in any other database.

However, if I save and re-use the full explosion of Mental Disorders, what if APA decides to add another narrower term to the list between when I saved it and when I use it? Potential for missing something of importance.

However, life is short and work is plentiful. I'm darned if I'm doing this over and over.

So, here is the complete explosion of Mental Disorders as of June 17, 2014:


DE "Mental Disorders" OR DE "Adjustment Disorders" OR DE "Affective Disorders" OR DE "Alexithymia" OR DE "Anxiety Disorders" OR DE "Autism" OR DE "Chronic Mental Illness" OR DE "Dementia" OR DE "Dissociative Disorders" OR DE "Eating Disorders" OR DE "Elective Mutism" OR DE "Factitious Disorders" OR DE "Gender Identity Disorder" OR DE "Hysteria" OR DE "Impulse Control Disorders" OR DE "Koro" OR DE "Mental Disorders due to General Medical Conditions" OR DE "Neurosis" OR DE "Paraphilias" OR DE "Personality Disorders" OR DE "Pervasive Developmental Disorders" OR DE "Pseudodementia" OR DE "Psychosis" OR DE "Schizoaffective Disorder" OR DE "Bipolar Disorder" OR DE "Major Depression" OR DE "Mania" OR DE "Seasonal Affective Disorder" OR DE "Acute Stress Disorder" OR DE "Castration Anxiety" OR DE "Death Anxiety" OR DE "Generalized Anxiety Disorder" OR DE "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder" OR DE "Panic Disorder" OR DE "Phobias" OR DE "Posttraumatic Stress Disorder" OR DE "Separation Anxiety" OR DE "Chronic Psychosis" OR DE "AIDS Dementia Complex" OR DE "Dementia with Lewy Bodies" OR DE "Presenile Dementia" OR DE "Semantic Dementia" OR DE "Senile Dementia" OR DE "Vascular Dementia" OR DE "Dissociative Disorders" OR DE "Depersonalization" OR DE "Dissociative Identity Disorder" OR DE "Fugue Reaction" OR DE "Eating Disorders" OR DE "Anorexia Nervosa" OR DE "Binge Eating Disorder" OR DE "Bulimia" OR DE "Hyperphagia" OR DE "Kleine Levin Syndrome" OR DE "Pica" OR DE "Purging (Eating Disorders)" OR DE "Munchausen Syndrome" OR DE "Transsexualism" OR DE "Mass Hysteria" OR DE "Explosive Disorder" OR DE "Childhood Neurosis" OR DE "Experimental Neurosis" OR DE "Occupational Neurosis" OR DE "Traumatic Neurosis" OR DE "Apotemnophilia" OR DE "Exhibitionism" OR DE "Fetishism" OR DE "Incest" OR DE "Pedophilia" OR DE "Sexual Masochism" OR DE "Sexual Sadism" OR DE "Transvestism" OR DE "Voyeurism" OR DE "Antisocial Personality Disorder" OR DE "Avoidant Personality Disorder" OR DE "Borderline Personality Disorder" OR DE "Dependent Personality Disorder" OR DE "Histrionic Personality Disorder" OR DE "Narcissistic Personality Disorder" OR DE "Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder" OR DE "Paranoid Personality Disorder" OR DE "Passive Aggressive Personality Disorder" OR DE "Sadomasochistic Personality" OR DE "Schizoid Personality Disorder" OR DE "Schizotypal Personality Disorder" OR DE "Aspergers Syndrome" OR DE "Autism" OR DE "Rett Syndrome" OR DE "Acute Psychosis" OR DE "Affective Psychosis" OR DE "Alcoholic Psychosis" OR DE "Capgras Syndrome" OR DE "Childhood Psychosis" OR DE "Chronic Psychosis" OR DE "Experimental Psychosis" OR DE "Hallucinosis" OR DE "Paranoia (Psychosis)" OR DE "Postpartum Psychosis" OR DE "Reactive Psychosis" OR DE "Schizophrenia" OR DE "Senile Psychosis" OR DE "Toxic Psychoses" OR DE "Cyclothymic Personality" OR DE "Anaclitic Depression" OR DE "Dysthymic Disorder" OR DE "Endogenous Depression" OR DE "Postpartum Depression" OR DE "Reactive Depression" OR DE "Recurrent Depression" OR DE "Treatment Resistant Depression" OR DE "Hypomania" OR DE "Acrophobia" OR DE "Agoraphobia" OR DE "Claustrophobia" OR DE "Ophidiophobia" OR DE "School Phobia" OR DE "Social Phobia" OR DE "Alzheimer's Disease" OR DE "Creutzfeldt Jakob Syndrome" OR DE "Picks Disease" OR DE "Senile Psychosis" OR DE "Masochistic Personality" OR DE "Acute Schizophrenia" OR DE "Alcoholic Hallucinosis" OR DE "Childhood Schizophrenia" OR DE "Symbiotic Infantile Psychosis" OR DE "Paranoia (Psychosis)" OR DE "Folie A Deux" OR DE "Catatonic Schizophrenia" OR DE "Paranoid Schizophrenia" OR DE "Process Schizophrenia" OR DE "Schizophrenia (Disorganized Type)" OR DE "Schizophreniform Disorder" OR DE "Undifferentiated Schizophrenia" OR DE "Delirium Tremens" OR DE "Korsakoffs Psychosis" OR DE "Wernicke's Syndrome"

Use at your own risk.

Advance Directives

"Decision Making"[Mesh] OR "Advance Care Planning"[Mesh] OR Advance Directive Adherence"[Mesh] OR "Third Party Consent"[Mesh]

End stage dementia

"Dementia"[Mesh]
AND
"end stage"[tiab] OR "late stage"[tiab] OR "later stage"[tiab] OR "late stages"[tiab] OR "later stages"[tiab]

Mental Capacity

For some reason, it's really hard to remember this one. I've done searches with this term probably about once a year and every time I remember that there's a term for this but it takes me forever to figure out what it is.

Most doctors ask for information about mental capacity or the capacity to make health decisions. But the MeSH term is:

Mental Competency

In the occupational setting

Mix and match from the following:


"Occupational Diseases"[Mesh] OR "Occupational Injuries"[Mesh] OR "Occupational Exposure"[Mesh]

"Noise, Occupational"[Mesh] OR "Accidents, Occupational"[Mesh]

"Occupational Health Physicians"[Mesh] OR "Occupational Health"[Mesh] OR "Occupational Health Services"[Mesh] OR "Occupational Health Nursing"[Mesh] OR "Occupational Medicine"[Mesh]

"Worker's Compensation"[Mesh] OR "Rehabilitation, Vocational"[Mesh] OR "Return to Work"[Mesh]

"Occupational Groups"[Mesh] OR "Occupations"[Mesh] OR "Industry"[Mesh]

Differential Diagnosis

PubMed:
"Differential Diagnosis"[Mesh] OR mimic*[tiab] OR masquerad*[tiab]

Ovid Medline:
exp Differential Diagnosis/ OR mimic*.mp. OR masquerad*.mp.

EBSCO Medline:
MH "Differential Diagnosis+" OR mimic* OR masquerad*

Why we should not be using acronyms

I received a request by phone a while ago. Someone wanted some books on ACL. He seemed quite concerned that we might not have anything on the topic. I breezily assured him that we did indeed, but he still sounded unsure. After several exchanges, I told him, "yes, we often get questions about that ligament."

He said, "ligament?"

Turns out, he was not interested in the anterior cruciate ligament, but in acute cardiac life-support.

We all operate within our daily silos, familiar with the jargon that we've learned in our training. I once took a split biology/computer science class about bioinformatics. One of the lecture slides referred to a number in units of kb. Since it was a strand of DNA, the computer science student next to me leaned over and asked, "is that kilobytes?" I thought about it, and whispered back, "no, I think it's kilobases."

The correct way to use acronyms, as seen in most article abstracts, is to write out a term in full the first time, followed by the acronym in parentheses, and then use the acronym from then on. This utilises all of the efficiency of an acronym without causing the confusion. However, literature searches often come in with only acronyms, no definitions.

Arrgh!

Here is a conversation which occurred between me and two colleagues yesterday:

C1: So, I was listening to a really interesting podcast on MDNA yesterday.
Me: You mean mRNA?
C1: No, I think it was MDNA. You know, ecstasy.
Me: Oh! Yeah - is it MMDA?
C2: NMDA.
Me: Oh, yeah.

The actual acronym is MDMA!

OF course, now all I can remember from that conversation was the confusion over the acronym - I can't remember any of the salient points, for instance, what disease they were trying to treat with the stuff.

If you have an emergency, you go to the ER. Unless you work there, in which case you go to the ED. Unless you're in Britain, then you go to A&E.

• But, if you're talking about ER outcomes, is it Emergency Room or Enhanced Recovery?
• And ED can stand for Emergency Department or Erectile Dysfunction.
• A&E does also stand for Arts & Entertainment as well as Accident & Emergency, but I'm guessing those ones can be distinguished by context.

Still,

• if the patient has SAD, is it Seasonal Affective Disorder or Social Anxiety Disorder?
• if the patient has MS, do they have Multiple Sclerosis, Mitral Stenosis, Myasthenic Syndrome, or Metabolic Syndrome? (Yes, I have seen MS for metabolic syndrome, although MetS is more prevalent.) It also stands for Morphine Sulphate, Magnesium Sulphate, Medical Student, Medical Staff, Medication Safety, and Mental Status. Not to mention the non-medical meanings such as Microsoft, Mississippi, millisecond, and manuscript.
• if the patient has OCD, is it Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or Osteochondritis Dissecans?
• does VTE stand for Venous Thromboembolism or Vitamin E?
• does tPA stand for Tissue Plasminogen Activator or Tissue Polypeptide Antigen? 
• does ACE stand for Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme, Acute Care for the Elderly, or Acute Concussion Evaluation?
• does MVA stand for motor vehicle accident, malignant ventricular arrhythmia, mechanical ventricular assistance, mevalonic acid, microvillous atrophy, mitral valve annuloplasty, or mitral valve area?
• does NHP stand for Nottingham Health Profile or Non-Human Primate?
• does RDA stand for Resource Description and Access, or Recommended Dietary Allowance? 
• does ALS stand for Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or alternate/alternative light source?
• does BP stand for Blood Pressure or Bisphosphonates? 
• PSA stands for Prostate Specific Antigen, but PsA stands for Psoriatic Arthritis. 
• does AED stand for antiepileptic drugs or automated external defibrillator? Getting that wrong could be quite a shock(!) 

Not convinced?

We received a question about EHT the other day. My colleague guessed either Empathy for Happiness Task, Egg Hatch Test, or Endothelial-to-Hematopoietic Transition. But it turned out the requestor had meant Eicosanoyl-5-Hydroxytryptamide.

And lastly, there are two phrases which should just never be used as an acronym. Seriously. They are: Follow Up and Deep Infiltrating Endometriosis. I mean, come on. Just don't.