Information Overload:

Rx for Dental Professionals

Elizabeth Kettell,M.L.S.Eastman Institute for Oral Health

University of Rochester Medical CenterMarch 2011

Objectives

• Understand the importance of staying informed in your practice

• Understand the concept of information overload

• Develop a plan for keeping up-to-date• Explore tools to make this process easy

“I’ve graduated, why do I have to keep learning”?

•Knowledge becomes outdated quickly

•An awareness of latest research is necessary for patient care

•Patients have access to more information, not all valid

Barriers to Keeping Up-To-Date

• Time• Technology• Too much

information “TMI”

Diagnosis: Information Overload

• 2009 to March 2011 – Over 1800 trials published in dental journals. Did you read them?

• Medical information doubles approximately every 5 years

• Internet makes more information available but it is difficult to determine its validity

Treatment: Current Awareness Tools

• Tools to help you keep track of news and research in your field.

• Tailor to fit your individual needs

• Selected information comes to you, instead of you going out and finding the information

Tool #1: PubMed Alerts

1. Create your own “My NCBI” account. http://tinyurl.com/49hv46y

2. In Pubmed, conduct a search on a specific topic

3. Set up an alert so you can be notified when something new on your topic is published

Saving Your PubMed Search

• Make sure you are logged in to your My NCBI account (upper right )

• Conduct your search and modify as necessary• Once confident you have a good search, click

the “Save Search” link directly above the search box

• Follow the instructions• For more information, watch this PubMed

tutorial at http://bit.ly/f5rSGu

PubMed Alerts: How they look in your Inbox

Sender is “My NCBI”

Search Strategy

ResultsInclude Citation and Abstract of Article

Tool #2: Journal Tables of Contents

• Register for email notification each time a selected journal publishes a new issue. The notification will include the table of contents for that issue

• Get started. Find a list of dental journals, with links for registering here http://bit.ly/dk0TT1

TOC Alerts: View from your Inbox

Tool #3: MDLinx Dentistry

• Offer email delivery of updates on your specialties of choice

• Employs doctors, dentists and other healthcare professionals to review articles on a daily basis.

• After review, articles are sorted by specialty and subspecialty.

• Select your specialties, register for daily or weekly delivery (I recommend weekly)

• http://www.mdlinx.com/dentistry/registration.cfm

Tool #4 Google Alerts

• Much like PubMed, you conduct a search in Google and tell Google to notify you with updates

• You must have a Google account to use this tool

• Also a great way to monitor yours or your practice’s reputation

How to Set Up a Google Alert1.Go to

http://www.google.com/alerts

2.Enter your search terms3.Select your preferences from

the drop down menus

4.Enter your email address

5.Select Create Alert

Alerts will arrive in your inbox

Tool #5: RSS

Instead of:• “Googling”, or• scanning through zillions of webpages, or• bookmarking pages and never getting back to

them, or• accumulating stacks of papers you plan to

read• or….

What is RSS?

Getting Started with RSS

• Register for a Google Reader Account: http://bit.ly/er3exi

• Click on a website’s or blog’s RSS icon to subscribe to the RSS feed

• To read your feeds, log on to Google Reader at your leisure

• More about Google Reader http://youtu.be/VSPZ2Uu_X3Y

Some Suggested Feeds:• Bibby Library News

http://bibbynews.wordpress.com/feed/• EIOH News

http://urdentistrynews.wordpress.com/feed/• Evidence based critical summaries from the

American Dental Association http://ebd.ada.org/CriticalSummariesRSS.aspx

• List of dental blogs selected by Bibby library http://bit.ly/gE1I9H

Don’t Let Information Overload Bog you DownFor more information, consult with your dental information professional:

Elizabeth Kettell, MLSBibby LibraryEastman Institute for Oral Health @ University of Rochester Medical CenterElizabeth_kettell@urmc.rochester.edu

Thank You!