October 19, 2020
It seems like everyone has been focused on health and medical topics over the past several months. Living in the midst of a global pandemic will do that to people! However, in the past few weeks of my life, this has been even more heightened. Due to an unforeseen situation, I spent several days in the hospital with my spouse. She is doing fine now, but she had a burst appendix and everything that goes with that rather common but exceptionally dangerous condition.
I really think one of the best health and medical resources at the Library is the Consumer Health Complete online resource. This was very valuable to me as I considered the various procedures that were ordered for my wife. The information in Consumer Health Complete is very well researched, but it’s also from sources that are easy for people without a medical background to understand, especially from the tab of “pamphlets and fact sheets.” This was incredibly helpful for me!
If you want to ramp things up a bit, MEDLINE is a resource that I first learned about when I was in Library School in 1990. I learned about this online database as the premier place to send pre-med and nursing students to help find information for doctors, as well as for others studying for careers in the medical profession. Much of the information found in MEDLINE might be a bit over most of our heads (those of us outside the medical profession), but if you want the latest and best thinking on a current medical condition, this is a great resource.
A few years ago, I was asked to help someone find a doctor. How do you find a doctor? You can ask a friend for a reference, but is there another way? Yes! You can search Reference Solutions Healthcare. If you have ever used our Reference Solutions resource for business contacts, you know that this directory is a very powerful tool, allowing you to find businesses by industry, location, and more. The “Healthcare” section of this resource can find doctors by specialty, education, and many other criteria. This information is updated regularly by people (as opposed to web crawlers).
Over the past 20 years, there have been several times when my loved ones have had medical challenges. Doctors bombarded me with terminology and information with which I was unfamiliar. How do you make sense of all that you’re being told? How do you find valid information that you can trust? Like so many times in my life, the Library and its resources were the answer, helping me find and understand this important new information.
If you find yourself in a similar situation, I would encourage you to explore the Library’s health and well-being resources as well.
Steven V. Potter
MCPL Director & CEO
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