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Canadian Journal of Rural Medicine
CJRM Winter 2001 / hiver 2001

New Canadian Internet resources

Barrie McCombs, MD, CCFP, CCFP(EM)

CJRM 2001;6(1):57-8.


"I got my education, out behind the barn, I ain't a-fooling, no-o-o sir-ee-ee. Passed each examination, out behind the barn, but it almost made a wreck out of me" — Little Jimmy Dickens (c. 1950)

This article reviews two new Canadian Internet resources: MD Consult, an addition to the CMA/OSLER Web site, and WebMD, an Internet service for members of the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC) and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC). It also provides information on several related Web sites.

Canadian Medical Association home page

www.cma.ca

As well as their public Web site, the CMA provides several "members only" services, such as the new online textbooks from MD Consult (see the next item), the OSLER MEDLINE search engine, and financial and practice management information from MD Management (MDM). However, the availability of these resources is not well described on the CMA home page. To register, members can go to the CMA OSLER page or contact CMA's Member Service Centre at 800 457-4205; cmamsc@cma.ca

CMA — MD Consult

www.cma.ca/osler

The CMA recently added MD Consult to the OSLER Web site. This excellent resource provides full-text access to more than 35 online textbooks, selected full-text journals, patient information sheets, clinical practice guidelines and medical news. MD Consult has been a valuable part of the Rural Alberta Virtual Library project for the past 2 years, so I can recommend it highly. Here are some hints.

Registration: When you first use MD Consult, you are asked to provide your name and address. This is used to customize the patient-information printouts. You can change this information at any time by clicking on the *Personal Folder* link on the MD Consult home page. The company guarantees they do not release this information to third parties.

Home page: When you first log on, click on *Take a Tour* link, then take a moment to read the excellent Help files. Return to the home page at any time by clicking the MD Consult logo at the top of any page.You can view a list of the Web site contents by clicking on the *Clinical Content* link.

Search page: The most efficient way to find information is to use the *Search Page* link in the upper menu of the home page. Enter search terms individually in each Subject box. The page allows you to select the Boolean Logic operators AND, OR, or EXCLUDE. The default is AND. This feature is described in more detail in the Help files. To browse the list of textbook titles, click on the *Reference Books* link on the home page. The textbooks cover most medical specialties, including family medicine. The indexing system is limited to the index available in the paper textbook.The full-text journals are limited to those published by the partners in MD Consult. As well as searching the full-text journals, the system also conducts a MEDLINE search. The *Journal Search* link on the home page provides more journal search options than the main Search Page.

Patient information: The patient education material is useful but may require customization to suit a Canadian practice. The system allows you to add your own notes to each page of information. These notes are saved for future use.

Clinical practice guidelines: The clinical practice guidelines section is adequate, but you will find a better selection of Canadian guidelines on the CMA Clinical Infobase page.

"Medical News": This feature provided mainly US content, so is of limited benefit to Canadian physicians.

Availability: The number of concurrent users is limited, so please log off as soon as you are finished.

MD Consult — home page

www.mdconsult.com

If you are not a CMA member or use MD Consult frequently, you can obtain an individual subscription to MD Consult for US$200/yr. They provide a free 10-day trial subscription. Your CMA User Name and Password will NOT work on the MD Consult home page.

CMA — MEDLINE search

www.cma.ca/osler

The OSLER section of the CMA Web site also provides free access to the powerful Ovid MEDLINE search engine. The CMA library staff provide free searching assistance. The Ovid search engine is useful for complex MEDLINE searches, but for simple searches you will get faster results with either MD Consult or PubMed (see below).

CMA — CPG Infobase

www.cma.ca/cpgs/index.asp

The CMA Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPG) page has now added an internal search engine. There is a simple key word search box on the main page. If you click on the Basic or Advanced search buttons you can search by category or other criteria.

Adobe Acrobat Reader

www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

To print many of the CMA guidelines, the Adobe Acrobat Reader program is required. You can download it free from the Adobe Web site. By the time you read this article, the CPG page may have added a direct link to the Adobe Web site.

MD Management — Practice Management

www.cma.ca/mdm/

The MDM section of the CMA Web site contains useful Practice Management *Self Learning Modules* including *Effective Practice Management*, *Manage Your Office Staff*, *Information Technology* and *Practice Valuation*. To access these full-text documents, use the *Members Only Services* link on the MDM home page. The "public" MDM Practice Management page contains a brief description of the modules, but fails to mention the existence of the Members Only version. The "Information Technology" document is badly out of date in its discussion on personal computers.

WebMD Canada

www.webmd.ca

This new Web site is available to members of the CFPC and the RCPSC. If you are a member of either College, you should have received a letter in October 2000 providing temporary registration information; if you did not, contact the appropriate College (see below). If you need technical support, call WebMD's customer support line at: 888 291-0767.

The WebMD *Medical Library* includes Scientific American Medicine (a textbook of internal medicine), Scientific American Surgery (a textbook of surgery), Disease Updates (capsule summaries on selected diseases), the full text of articles from Canadian Family Physician and a selection of patient handouts. The site provides a free, secure email service. This allows registered physicians to exchange confidential information. The email service can be used to send non-secure email to non-WebMD addresses.

CFPC contact: Gill Johnston; 800 387-6197 x223, gj@cfpc.ca or www.cfpc.ca

RCPSC contact: RCPSC Communications; 800 668-3740 x201, communications@rcpsc.edu or access their Web site at: www.rcpsc.medical.org

PubMed — MEDLINE search

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/

The US National Library of Medicine's PubMed Web site provides free, user-friendly access to MEDLINE literature searching. They recently added several new features, such as "Cubby", which allows you to save a search strategy for later use. The Web site provides excellent Help and FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) files.

PubMed Tutorial

www.library.health.ufl.edu/pubmed/PubMed2/

If you would like to learn more about the new features of PubMed, visit the University of Florida Health Sciences Library PubMed Tutorial site.


Dr. McCombs is Director, University of Calgary Medical Information Service, Calgary, Alta.

Correspondence to: Dr. Barrie McCombs, Director, University of Calgary Medical Information Service, 3330 Hospital Dr. NW, Calgary AB T2N 3Z0; bmccombs@ucalgary.ca; www.ruralnet.ab.ca/medinfo/

© 2001 Society of Rural Physicians of Canada