How to find and evaluate reliable evidence-based health information

As I write this I am sitting in my newly set up home office and doing my part to help “flatten the curve” of covid-19. I began my career at the Herzl Family Medicine Clinic at the Jewish General Hospital and have been working for 15 years to help patients and caregivers as well as health professionals find and evaluate health information.

There is so much misinformation out there! Now more than ever we are inundated with all sorts of health information and advice, some more trustworthy than others. You may be feeling overwhelmed, and not sure even where to begin looking for information let alone how to assess whether it is true or false. You may have other health issues that have not been put on hold because of a pandemic and are finding it harder than ever to access the information you need.

Today I am proud to share with you an amazing resource that was born out of years of hard work and the passion and love of an amazing team.

The Online Health Information Aid website is finally here!

Search for, evaluate and use reliable online health information

The website:

  • provides tips and resources on searching, evaluating, and using online health information;
  • aims to improve skills and confidence in finding trustworthy health information online, enabling positive outcomes while reducing negative ones;
  • was developed based on research evidence and co-designed with users;
  • ultimately, supports lifelong learning and empowers people to participate in their own health care.

For Covid-19 specific information, our Medical Library colleagues at the University of British Columbia have produced an excellent and comprehensive resource guide on all aspects of the current coronavirus pandemic for the public, patients, and health professionals.

IMPORTANT: Neither of these resources should replace the directives of McGill University, nor should they be taken as medical advice. If you need to speak to a health professional for advice, call 1-877-644-4545 or 811. For more information about McGill’s response to the pandemic consult https://www.mcgill.ca/coronavirus.

Please share both resources widely and feel free to re-post this message to social media or email it to your friends and family.

Take care of yourselves and please know that the Schulich team is working hard to make sure you are supported during this stressful time. For information about library resources and services during this period visit our home page, use our chat service or reach out to your liaison librarian.

Francesca Frati, BFA, MLIS
Assistant librarian
Liaison for the McGill Ingram School of Nursing and Affiliated Health Institution Libraries.

Doctors’ Cell Phones Are Contaminating Hospitals by Annie Charron

Today we have another guest undergraduate student post, originally submitted as a class assignment for Communicating Science (CCOM 314).

With support from Diane Dechief, Faculty Lecturer at the McGill Writing Centre, we will be sharing more noteworthy student writing right here on The Turret.

Annie chose to write a Trilobite article that provides knowledge on the health consequences of the use of cell phones by doctors.


Doctors’ Cell Phones Are Contaminating Hospitals

Your mobile phone carries the dirty fragments of germs. Thousands of microscopic bacteria bugs are crawling on it. The residue of greasy food is smudged on the screen. The remnants touched on public door handles have engulfed the surface of the phone.

Mobile phones are your hands’ partner in crime: you can wash your hands to eradicate germs and prevent the spread of germs, but you can’t wash the cell phone – at least not with soap. Without proper cleaning, germs are like glitter, they will never go away. Healthcare workers who bring mobile phones to work interfere with infection controls in hospitals.

Healthcare workers cell phones are a magnet for bacteria and harmful chemicals, which could decrease patients’ recovery. Hospitals should be the most sterile places in the world. But our tiny gadgets may ruin this. At any rate, there should be major shame towards the television series Grey’s Anatomy, where the characters are constantly using their mobile devices during patient care without washing their hands.

In a study published by Excellent Publishers in 2017, Ganapathy Shakthivel and his colleagues, working in the department of microbiology at Tirunelveli Medical College in India, examined 50 randomly selected healthcare workers at a specialized care hospital. They investigated how the bacterial contamination of cell phones poses a threat to infections. They then assessed whether contamination could be cleaned simply with 70% rubbing alcohol.

The study lasted for two months and included mobile phones belonging to doctors, nurses, laboratory technicians, nursing assistants and hospital workers. Each worker first filled out a questionnaire that asked questions about the prevalence of phone usage between patient consultations and if workers washed their hands in between use or followed a strict sterile routine. Following this, each mobile phone was swabbed twice. The first swab took place before the decontamination procedure, the second swab occurred after the phone was thoroughly cleaned with the rubbing alcohol for 5 to 7 minutes.

The study revealed that of the 50 mobile phones in the study, 90% were found to be carrying multiple microorganism bacteria such as E. coli, which is very likely to cause infections. The decontamination results revealed that rubbing alcohol proves effective. The majority of the phones (78%) showed no bacterial growth after decontamination and 12% showed decreased bacterial growth. Another study led by Usha Arora (2009), showed a higher decontamination efficacy of approximately 98% with the 70% rubbing alcohol, compared to Ganapathy Shakthivel’s (2017) results of 86.6%.

Ganapathy Shakthivel (2017) states that the use of cell phones in India accounts for more than 88% of all users in Intensive Care Units and Operation theaters. And if a cell phone is not routinely cleaned in hospitals it becomes “a reservoir of infection.” Phones are a vehicle for the transmission of infection, to both patients and the community. The questionnaire revealed that only 12% of the healthcare workers made a habit of washing their hands before attending to a patient. That being said, “nearly 52% of the workers agreed that mobile phones may act a vector for spread of nosocomial (a disease originating in a hospital) infections.”

Preventative methods for eliminating the spread of infection via cell phones, include training other individuals (children, colleagues) not to touch phones other than their own. Some hospitals have banned or eliminated the use of cell phones during working hours. This may be hard to accomplish, considering you touch your phone on average 2,617 times a day. The most important strategy is simply to clean the device with rubbing alcohol before, during and after work – this regular routine will significantly reduce infections in hospitals.

References

Ganapathy Shakthivel, P.C., G. Velvzhi, G. Sucilathangam, Revathy, C. (2017). Mobile phones in healthcare setting: Potential threat in infection control. Int. J.Curr. Microbio  App. Sci. 6(3): 706-711. doi: https://doi.org/10.20546/ijcmas.2017.603.081

Usha, A., P. Devi, A, Chadga, S. Malhotra. (2009). Cell phones A modern slayhouse for bacteria pathogens. Jk Science. 11(3). Retrieved from http://www.jkscience.org/archive/vol113/6-Original%20Article%20-%20cell%20phones.pdf

Examples of point-of-care tools your doctor is using: UpToDate vs. DynaMed

Health information is often difficult to navigate. Try a quick PubMed search and you’ll instantly get a sense of the number of published articles that are out there, and that’s not even everything (Tip: Filter your results using the article type “systematic reviews”–not “reviews”–to narrow down your results, and favour Cochrane reviews for their rigor; alternatively, use PubMed Clinical Queries).

Where am I going with this? Well, clinicians are busy people and it is obviously really important for them to stay on top of things. How are some ways they do this using McGill-licensed resources? These resources just happen to be available to the entire McGill community, so they are worth a look even if you are not a busy clinician.

Many clinicians are huge fans of UpToDate. It’s a really expensive resource and one we have great trouble affording, but it is definitely worth a look. It’s easy to use (designed for free text searching; look for your terms within articles using CTRL-F on a PC or CMD-F on a Mac if they’re not in the article title). Evidence is not always graded, although they are improving this.

An alternative to UpToDate and a nice option if you’re an avid mobile device user is DynaMed. We began licensing it this past spring, and one key advantage of it over UpToDate is that you can download all the content onto a mobile device, which means you don’t need an internet connection to view it. The app is a bit clunky but the content is there. Levels of Evidence are pretty consistently applied.

Health is important to just about all of us, so why not give these point-of-care tools a try?