1 What is Access Medicine?
Access Medicine is a collection of online textbooks that cover a variety of health topics and much more. There are over 60 e-books (including Harrison’s Online, Current Medical Diagnosis, William’s Obstetrics and Tintinalli’s Emergency Medicine) with nu- merous photographs and illustrations, an integrated drug database, diagnostic tools, case files, patient education information, video and audio files, and a Quick Answers section with expert information on diagnosis and management.
What can I do with it?
You can use Access Medicine to access electronic books on various health topics, to search across different content types (e-books, images, case studies, drugs, diagno- sis) with one search.
How do I get to it?
To get to Access Medicine:
1. Go to www.shirp.ca;
2. Click on “Look for a Book” on the left hand side of the page.
3. Scroll down the page to E-Book Collections 4. Click on Access Medicine
5. If you are accessing this database from outside a health region facility, you may be asked to log in if you have not done so already.
A guide to A guide to A guide to
Access Medicine Access Medicine Access Medicine
Saskatchewan Health Information Resources Partnership www.shirp.ca
Tour of Access Medicine
The main screen for Access Medicine is made up of:
1. A-Z Index: for general browsing of the web site.
2. Search Area: has a search box, drop down menu options, auto suggest option, and an Advanced Search. Above it, are options (on blue line) that can also be used to narrow a search to a specific area.
3. Browsing Area: has three tabs: Features, Textbooks and Advanced Search. An advanced search can be performed using the tab here, or from the Search Area.
4. Access Medicine Updates: has updates on book chapters, what’s new in Ac- cess Medicine and Systematic Reviews in the News.
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Tabs in the Browse Area: The Features tab provides links to textbooks and other options listed in the search area such as Case Files, DDx (Differential Diagnosis), and Practice Guidelines. It also displays a Video of the month and an Image of the Day. There also is an alphabetical list of Quick Answers.
The Textbooks tab provides links to all tabs and the Advanced Search tab provides options to narrow or widen the search.
Note: The Advance Search option is also available from the search area.
Searching
There are three ways to search Access Medicine:
1. The Basic Search 2. Advanced Search 3. Phrase Search 4. Use one of the tabs
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5 Basic Search
Do a basic search using the search box. It is best to enable autosuggest before searching. Type the text you are searching for and click search.
Let us search for anemia. Type anemia in the searach box and click Search. This will search all of Access Medicine, including Q & A, Updates, Drugs and DDx—the Diagnosaurus, all listed on the blue line.
The search results are displayed in the centre of the page. There are subtopics listed on the left hand side if you want to narrow your search further.
Each of the results indicates where the result is from. Eg: Diagnosarus, Harrison’s Online, etc. Depending on what you are looking for, click on one of the links. Let’s click on link for Diagnosaurus: Anemia, general approach.
The next page will show you results in an easy to follow bullet pointed list. It will also list related DDx at the end of the page for further expanding or narrowing your search further.
To narrow down a concept to a particular source available from the dropdown list, choose the appropriate item from the drop down menu. In this example, we will look for a video on Thoracentesis. Type Thoracentesis in the search box, then choose Images, Video and Audio from the drop down menu. Then click Search.
Note: Videos require Quick Time or Flash. If it is not already installed on your computer, contact your IT department to download this.
The results page will have all videos and images related to Thoracentesis.
The first item is a video. Click on either on the video image or the words Tho- racentesis to watch the video.
7 Advanced Search
Let us do an Advanced Search. To do this click on the Advanced Search button or click on the Advanced Search tab as shown below. If you are unable to see the tabs, click on Home and then choose Advanced Search tab. Regardless of which Advance Search you click on , you will land in the page shown below.
Type in the search term and then choose the appropriate format or section from which you would like your results. All book titles, formats and other available options are listed in the blue area.
Let us search for stroke and choose Quick Answers and under All Books choose Cur- rent Medical Diagnosis & Treatment 2012. Then click Search.
Your search results will be displayed on the next page as seen below. Click on any one of these links to know more about them. Let us click on heat stroke.
The results of heat stroke are displayed below. This page helps you narrow the search down further by subtopics such as diagnosis, prevention or treatment. Click on one of these links to know more about them. You can also click on View all sub- topics to see if there are any more subtopics listed. To obtain more results, choose more relevant books from the initial Advanced Search page.
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There will be articles listed with reference to PubMed. Some of these articles are available for free via PubMed and they might be available on SHIRP. If they are not available you can request them through SHIRP.
At the bottom of the page, there are options to either print, email, bookmark or download the Quick Answers to a Handheld device.
To Bookmark a section, you need to have a My AccesssMedicine account. Cre- ate an account at the prompt here or go to the home page and access it from the top right corner of the page. This account can be used to Access Medicine on mobile devices.
Requesting an Article through SHIRP
To request an article through SHIRP, go back to SHIRP home page. Click on Find an Article. Under Look for a Journal Title, click on Check Our Journal List.
Look for the journal this article is from. In the above example, PMID: 2057444 is from the Journal of Chinese Medical Association. A search will show that
SHIRP does not have this journal.
Click again on Find an Article from the navigation menu on the left hand side of SHIRP homepage. Click on the link under What if we Don’t Subscribe to the Journal you Need and follow the instructions to request the article.
Phrase Search: To search for a phrase using full-text option, type the phrase in the Advanced Search tab search box, check the box beside Full-text search, choose from the list of options and click search.
Let us search for the phrase anemia AND vitamin B12. Check the box beside Full- text search, Quick Answers and All Updates.
Note: if you want to check everything in the textbooks, you can check All Books box as well. Just be aware that since there are many sources to search from there will be too many results.
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As with the article before, under the reference section, there are references to Pub- Med articles. Some of these are available for free. If they are not, you can request them from SHIRP. Follow the instructions on Page 9 on how to request an article through SHIRP.
Bookmarking a section
To Bookmark a section, you need to have a My AccesssMedicine account. Create an account at the prompt here or go to the home page and access it from the top
Other searchable information is also found on the blue line in the search area. You can search for Case Files, Drugs, Guidelines and more.
Let us do a search for a Case File. Case files are listed by Case Number and by Specialty. It is easier to view by specialty.
Click on Case Files on the blue line in the search area. On the next page, click on View by Specialty. Choose Surgery.
Choose from one of the subtopics available, read about the case, questions, ap- proach, clinical pearls, references and comprehension questions. The example be- low shows the case of Crohn’s Disease
These pages can be printed using the Print option in your browser. Choose File >
Print Preview to check before hitting print.
If you need help searching Access Medicine or retrieving articles mentioned in this collection contact the SHIRP office at 966-8739 or 966-1291.
