Duke Medical Center Library & Archives Blog
Category: Databases

If you’re looking for individual attitudes and opinions on health topics, we’ve got a tool for that! The Health Poll Database, produced by the Roper Center, provides a searchable interface of thousands of health-related polls conducted in the United States in the last 80 years! Downloadable datasets are also available in many file formats (including Stata, ASCII, and SPSS). Cross-tabs and frequency distribution charts are included in results with easy access to graphics for presentations. Health topics include insurance, health care, social determinants and many more.

Categories: Databases

The Duke Medical Center Library & Archives are in the middle of a yearlong trial of VisualDx that began in July 2022. As we continue to evaluate whether to subscribe to VisualDx in the future, we would like to hear about your experience with this resource. Please take a moment to share your feedback. All responses will be used internally, and your NetID will not be associated with your responses. We appreciate your help!

Categories: Alerts, Databases

Tags: visualdx, survey

We are midway through our yearlong trial of VisualDx, a clinical tool designed to visually represent variations of diseases, enhance diagnostic accuracy, aid in therapeutic decisions, and improve patient care. VisualDx’s 14,000+ diverse images and differential building tool have proven useful in both clinical and educational settings, and its welcoming tile grid invites users to easily and quickly interact. If you haven’t had time to explore VisualDx personally, helpful videos are available on YouTube, like how to Build a Differential.

According to an article in…

Categories: Databases

Tags: visualdx

The Medical Center Library & Archives' subscription to AccessMedicine includes a collection of over 600 one-page medical infographics that are high-yield summaries to serve as a point of entry into core foundational content. Specialty topics include: Cardiology, Dermatology, Emergency Medicine, Endocrinology, GI/Hepatology, Hematology/Oncology, Infectious Diseases, MSK, Nephrology, Neurology, Obstetrics/Gynecology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Pulmonology, Rheumatology, and Urology.

Categories: Databases

The Medical Center Library & Archives is pleased to announce a yearlong trial of visualDx, a clinical point-of-care tool, educational resource, and decision support system designed to enhance diagnostic accuracy, aid therapeutic decisions, and improve patient safety. The trial began in July 2022.

For those of you just meeting visualDx, this resource is:

• Renowned for its depth of diverse clinical images – 14,000+ images of variations in skin color
• A valuable diagnostic clinical tool that helps you build a differential diagnosis
• Useful for…

Categories: Databases, Explore Tools, Resource Updates

Tags: visualdx, images

With nearly 2 million apps in the Apple App store alone, it can be tricky to figure out which apps are worth your time and/or money. Before you go hunting in the App or Play Store, don’t forget about the health-related apps you can get through Duke. You can visit our Mobile Apps guide to get started or read on for some highlights!

Our most popular point-of-care apps include UpToDate and DynaMed, which feature an impressive variety of medical calculators and clinical evidence. Did you know that you can get CME/CE from both UpToDate and DynaMed? These will fulfill MOC CME requirements of some ABMS Member Boards including the ABIM.

Lexicomp…

Categories: Databases, Explore Tools

Tags: mobile apps, visualdx, UpToDate, DynaMed, Lexicomp

Seeking quick and reliable answers to your clinical questions? Look no further than the Library’s Clinical Tools page! Here you will find a handy list of links to point-of-care resources, decision-support tools, core eBooks, guidelines, and patient education information.

Some of these include:

• DynaMed, which provides evidence-based clinical information concerning diseases, drugs, and other therapies that is highly useful when making decisions about patient care.
• The ability to craft a single search for your patient’s problem/intervention…

Categories: Databases, Explore Tools, Resource Updates

Tags: DynaMed, UpToDate

The following Springer resources are accessible from the Databases, Journals & Books section of our Website.

Springer Nature Experiments

• New research solution to help researchers find, evaluate and implement protocols and methods to support their projects
• Covers a number of disciplines including biochemistry, biotechnology, cancer research, genetics/genomics, pharmacology/toxicology, plant science, and more
• Combines the key features of a database with indexing and discovery features supported by laboratory procedure specific functionalities
• Retrieves…

Categories: Databases, Explore Tools, Resource Updates

Tags: for researchers

Graduation is an important and exciting time of change for many students. Sadly, one of these changes may involve losing access to many Duke resources such as library subscriptions to journals and databases.

Before You Lose Access

• Go through your saved citations and PDFs and decide which ones you want to keep. If there are any articles that you would like to get PDFs for, do this before you leave while you still have access to free full text.
• Evaluate your citation manager needs before you leave. If you are using Endnote, double-check that you have the most current version on a personal device. This access will last you for a couple years, but you…

Categories: Databases

Tags: citation management, reference management, guide, open access, paywall, students

Embase has ventured into the world of preprints by now providing article preprints from medRXiv and bioRXiv.

Preprints are early versions of manuscripts that are shared on public preprint servers prior to peer review and publication. 

The benefit to you is earlier access to biomedical information including randomized controlled trials which might be included for systematic reviews as grey literature. Keep in mind that preprints are not peer-reviewed and therefore should be used with caution. 

Embase clearly identifies an article as a preprint on the publication record. When doing searches, you can…

Categories: Databases, Resource Updates

Tags: embase, preprint

Clinical Pharmacology, powered by ClinicalKey, is a comprehensive drug reference that supports healthcare professionals and health professions' students by providing current, accurate, and clinically relevant drug information.

The Clinical Pharmacology suite of resources includes:

• Drug monographs - detailed drug information for U.S. prescription drugs, herbal supplements, nutritional, vitamin and over-the-counter products
• Drug class overviews - to guide formulary drug reviews and therapeutic substitutions
• Additional lists, such as - drugs not recommended for splitting, Beers…

Categories: Databases, Explore Tools, Resource Updates

Tags: clinical pharmacology, clinicalkey

The Natural Medicines database offers information to help you make evidence-based decisions regarding alternative therapies including:

• 1400+ monographs with safety, effectiveness, adverse effects, and patient education handouts
• 170,000+ commercial products including their ingredients, effectiveness, safety, etc
• Natural Medicines Brand Evidence-based Rating (NMBER) based on safety and efficacy, with a 1-10 overall rating for products, helping you determine "Is it safe?" and "Does it work?"
• Interaction checker to avoid drug/supplement interactions
• Pregnancy & Lactation Checker plus links to patient education handouts
• Nutrient Depletion…

Categories: Databases

Tags: alternative medicine, complementary therapy, supplements

Have you noticed the newly designed front page for ClinicalKey? There have been some massive changes to the resource beyond just a facelift. Read on for more info and tips to get the most out of this great resource!

First, in case you are unfamiliar, Elsevier’s ClinicalKey is a medical search engine that gives you access to:

• Full-text reference books (over a 1000!) and journals including top titles such as Gray’s Anatomy, Goldman’s Cecil Medicine, Braunwald’s Heart Disease, The Lancet and Mayo Clinic Proceedings
• Clinical Overviews that provide succinct, easy-to-navigate summaries for quick answers
• Drug monographs
• Clinical calculators
• Practice guidelines
• Customizable patient education handouts
• Drug indications, do not…

Categories: Alerts, Databases, Resource Updates

Tags: clinicalkey, textbooks, e-books, images, calculators

Are you new to Duke and want to link your existing UpToDate account to Duke's institutional access? Here's what to do!

If access through your previous institution or personal subscription is still active:

You must let this lapse before you can link your account to Duke's institutional access. This will enable you to keep your existing username and password, as well as any accrued Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits. Once it has lapsed, access UpToDate via the Medical Center Library’s Website. Login with your existing username and password. 

If access through your previous institution or…

Categories: Databases

Tags: UpToDate

Let’s take a moment to demystify these commonly used acronyms. They are all unique identifiers for an article (like a barcode), which can be used to easily link to or find an article online.

A PMID (such as 30256255) is a unique numerical identifier for an article in PubMed. You will notice every article included in PubMed has a PMID under the citation/abstract. You can search this number in PubMed or our E-Journals page to go straight to that particular article.

E-Journals page

The International DOI Foundation assigns a unique alphanumeric string to…

Categories: Databases

Tags: pubmed, citations