Webinar session today

I had a chance to attend the online session today - this was the webinar suggested by our Librarians. Thanks for this- I had a chance to practice my online chatting.

There were a number of interesting social media sites discussed. Two main points that I took away from the session were:
1. It is important to set goals for your Social Media use
2. Be prepared to post alot of content in order to generate interest

Overall an interesting and informative session.

GURU Newsletter

A couple of our authors (Xanthoula and Melissa) are part of "GURU" - The Guideline Utilization Resource Unit in Cancer Care.

I have to say I love that acronym!

Check out their summer newsletter for the latest news from their unit: GURU Newsletter Summer 2011

Some Thoughts...

Hi everyone! Melissa and I have been brainstorming about some of the questions that were circulated to the group, and some of our collective thoughts are listed below. Looking forward to chatting with everyone this afternoon!

Resources we would you use in relation to a guideline topic:
For a question related to the guideline (i.e. PICO style question), we consult medical journals (both online directly through the publisher and through the databases provided by the library), guideline databases, government websites (e.g., National Cancer Institute), non-profit organizations (e.g., Canadian Cancer Society), and data sources such as SEER or Statistics Canada.

Some specific resources we refer to:
Guideline databases: National Guidelines Clearinghouse, CMA Infobase, SAGE (CPAC)
Guideline developers: Cancer Care Ontario, National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network, National Comprehensive Cancer Network, National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia), New Zealand Guidelines Group, European Society for Medical Oncologists, Society of Surgical Oncologists, American College of Radiology, Society of Gynecologic Oncology, BC Cancer Agency
Systematic reviews: Cochrane database, MEDLINE
Research articles: MEDLINE, Pubmed, EMBASE, CINAHL
Data/statistics: SEER, Canadian Cancer Society, Statistics Canada

Key benefits of checking these resources:
It's important to consider the source of the information. When trusted sources and/or high level evidence, such as guidelines, meta-analyses, or randomized controlled trials are available, we assess these sources first. Lower-level evidence, such as retrospective cohort studies or case series, can provide information, but should have the caveat that strong evidence is lacking. Data from SEER and Stats Canada are thought to have been collected in a systematic, standard fashion and are therefore reliable. Data from individual studies may or may not have used sound methodology and need to be reviewed.

Why we're interested in the topic of "clinical practice guidelines":
We develop clinical practice guidelines for cancer treatment as our core business. The guidelines serve (1) to articulate standard practice in Alberta, (2) as teaching tools, and (3) to inform family physicians, other specialists, and patients and families of what to expect for a particular type of cancer. The process of developing a guideline often gets the Tumour Team to discuss important or controversial issues and/or new research.

Virtual Interest Group Discussion-Clinical Practice Guidelines

I am in clinic this Thursday so will most likely not be able to participate in the live chat session.

A few thoughts around the four questions that were posed in relation to Clinical Practice Guidelines:

1. I would most likely consult two main sources. The first source is the governing body of my profession here in Alberta. The next source would be AHS internal resources. This would include consultation with collegues. After that I would consult research journals or databases. I am less likely to rely on free internet searches for this type of inquiry.

2. The specific resource would most likely depend on the need - how quickly do I need to gather this information?

3. By consulting with CRDHA and AHS internal resources first I would be ensuring that the information I am gathering is consistent with governing policies and guidelines of my profession as well as the organization I work for.

4. Remaining current on issues related to Clinical Practice Guidelines is a priority for me and forms a cornerstone to my professional practice.

Do you AGREE?

Not all Critical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) are created equal.

The Appraisal of Guidelines for Research & Evaluation (AGREE) II is an international tool used to critically appraise the quality of CPGs. Researchers may use this tool to assess guidelines that are published or as a guide to include in their own guideline development.

The AGREE II comprises 23 items organized into 6 quality domains, rated on a Likert scale:

1. scope and purpose
2. stakeholder involvement
3. rigour of development
4. clarity of presentation
5. applicability
6. editorial independence

The tool is pretty simple to use and comes with a resource manual and other supporting documentation for help. For more info: http://www.agreetrust.org/about-agree/
Access the tool here: http://www.agreetrust.org/resource-centre/agree-ii/

Anyone using AGREE II already? How are you using it?

Are there any other appraisal tools, like GRADE, that you are using?

How can Blogging help AHS?

One of Alberta Health Services five priority areas is:

Innovation and Performance Improvement

Transformational Improvement Program (TIP) #4 supports this priority

Enabling Our People to Achieve Excellence in Providing Health Services

A Blog is a tool that can provide support and resourses to help us excel at our work. It provides educational and development opportunities and can bring like-minded individuals together, regardless of geographical boundries, thus supporting TIP #5:

Enabling One Health System

Blogs can help us be the best we can be so we can make our Health Care system the best it can be. It can give us "SUPER POWERS"!

Delicious

Delicious is a social bookmarking web service (http://www.delicious.com/), for storing, sharing and discovering web bookmarks (websites) for our interest groups. Use it like your favourites you save on your computer. The great thing about Delicious bookmarks is they are portable, accessible anywhere with an Internet connection. Key benefits to Delicious:

• access your bookmarks anywhere
• tag your favourites to sort them
• share your favourite sites with others
• see what other people are bookmarking

All bookmarks posted to Delicious are publicly viewable by default; however, you can mark specific bookmarks as private.

A collection of bookmarks on Clinical Practice Guidelines has been started here:
http://www.delicious.com/YongtaoLin

and started a collection of bookmarks on social media and health care here:
http://www.delicious.com/kathryn.ranjit/social_media

Ready to build your own online bookmark collection?
1. Go to http://www.delicious.com/
2. Click on “Join Now” at the top left corner

Why a Clinical Practice Guideline Matters?

What are Clinical Practice Guidelines? What makes a high quality guideline? How do you seek out an evidence-based practice guideline? Are you in the process of developing one? What are your experiences in guideline implementation? We will explore these questions and more in the coming week.

Possible topics or posts for discussions
- What is CPG? What Makes a High Quality Guideline?
- Develop a guideline question
- Finding evidence for the guideline (Searching the literature)
- Guideline development tools:
- Guideline scoring tools, e.g. Agree II
- Implementing a CPG
- Your experience developing a guideline
- Your questions to the group about developing, implementing or evaluating a guideline
- Tools for Evidence-Based Decision Making

Writing Good Content

• Usefulness and uniqueness:
  contribute to the dialogue with your own ideas, make it current, useful, unique and relevant to our group.
  
  
• Original content and be brief:
  It's about both writing your own and fair use of other people's content (always giving credit for it).
  
  
• Start with good headlines:
  Sometimes it's the only thing your audience will see before making a decision about whether to read the post.
  
  
• Make the post scannable:
  Your reader should be able to quickly glance through the post and pick up the main points without reading too deeply.
  
  
• Write in a plain, concise, common-sense style:
  The key is simplicity, even on a complex topic.

Our discussions are all around the topics that you are the content experts at, so relate to your own experience and be open to different opinions.

Basic Blogging

Basic blogging rules:

1. “Chunk” the information into brief concise sentences.
2. Keep the information within the size of a screen. Try to reduce the amount of scrolling down the page the user has to do.
3. When using images, ensure that they are an appropriate size which compliments the text (see Image Guidelines).
4. Keep the title brief.

To post to the blog:

1. Log into your account at: www.blogger.com
2. Click on create content on the left side of the page.
3. Select Blog entry from the list.
4. In the Title box, type in the title of your blog post. Keep your title brief and concise.
5. Add content by typing directly into the body area of the edit screen. If you already have a story written in a Word document you can copy and paste from the Word document.
6. Please refer to Editing the Content Area - Body Section for full details on using the body section.
7. Keep in mind the content of your post should be contained within one ‘screen’ size. This is for the convenience of the user, the less scrolling the post requires the better.
8. Leave Input format, Book outline, Revision information, XML sitemap, URL path settings, URL redirects, Authoring information and Publishing options settings as default.
9. Scroll to the bottom of the page. Click on “Save”. Your post will now appear on the home page.

What is Social Media?

Social media is the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue, such as blogs, Twitter and Facebook. Distinct from industrial or traditional media, such as newspapers, television, and film, they are relatively inexpensive and accessible to enable anyone (even private individuals) to publish or access information, compared to industrial media, which generally require significant resources to publish information.

One of the foundational concepts in social media has become that you cannot completely control your message through social media but rather you can simply begin to participate in the "conversation" in the hopes that you can become part of that conversation.

The main increase in social media has been Facebook (www.facebook.com). It was ranked as the number one social networking site. The main increase in social media has been Facebook. It was ranked as the number one social networking site. Other examples of social networking websites LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/), MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/), Ning (http://www.ning.com/).

Blogs are usually maintained by an individual or a group on a particular subject with regular entries of commentary, or descriptions of events. Most recent entries are commonly displayed first. Most blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other websites. Blogger (www.blogger.com) is one of the most popular platforms for blogs. While a blogger's anonymity is often tenuous, a blogger's code of conduct is often developed to justify acceptable behavior and online security can also be enhanced by not making the Blog publicly available.

Some of the social media tools that can help with collaboration or/and authority building are Wikis such as Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org/) and Wetpaint (www.wetpaint.com/), social bookmarking sites including Delicious (www.delicious.com) and Google Reader (www.google.com/reader). In addition, Content Management Systems (i.e. Drupal at drupal.org) and Document Managing and Editing Tools (i.e. (Google Docs) are very widely used.

Social media also plays an important part in multimedia and entertainment. People use Youtube (www.youtube.com) for video sharing, Skype (www.skype.com) for livecasting, Flickr (www.flickr.com/) for photography and art sharing, and SecondLife (secondlife.com) to create virtual worlds.

References:

Social Media. Available from Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media. Retrieved July 4, 2011.

Rutledge, P. (2010). Research Survey Launched: Social Media and Influence of Photos on Body Image. Retrieved July 4, 2011 from: http://mprcenter.org/blog/2010/08/04/research-survey-launched-social-media-and-influence-of-photos-on-body-image/

"Statistics". Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics. Retrieved July 4, 2011.

Blog Guidelines

PURPOSE

Welcome to the Clinical Practice Guidelines Virtual Interest Group Blog!

This blog was created to make information sharing easier, to combine a variety of communication platforms into one convenient tool, and to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas amongst colleagues who work in the area of Clinical Practice Guidelines. These blog guidelines have been developed and implemented by your librarian facilitators and will be reviewed on a regular basis and revised as necessary.

The Clinical Practice Guidelines Virtual Interest Group Blog is located at http://hinccpg.blogspot.com/. Blogger is the software used to create the blog www.blogger.com.

BLOG MANAGERS

Managers/Administrators of the blog:
Yongtao Lin, Kathryn Ranjit

The blog managers reserve the right to edit blog content and labels to conform to our style guidelines and delete any misinformation or any inappropriate information.
Any feedback regarding content, labels or design can be directed to the blog managers.

BLOGGERS

Bloggers must be Alberta Health Services, Calgary Zone or Cancer Care employees who have an interest in Clinical Practice Guidelines. Access and writing privileges are granted by email invitation. Please contact one of the blog managers if you are having trouble accessing the blog.

ACCEPTABLE USE

The blog supports a Culture of Collaboration and Contribution. It is a Health Information Network Calgary-sponsored tool for use within the Health Information Network and Alberta Health Services Calgary Zone and Cancer Care. Lively opinion and commentary are welcome in blog posts. However, it is expected that blog postings will be professional and reflect well on the Health Information Network and Alberta Health Services Calgary Zone and Cancer Care. Bloggers are strongly encouraged to check facts, cite sources, present balanced views, acknowledge and correct errors, and check spelling and grammar before making a post live. All bloggers acknowledge receipt on registration of the blog acceptable use and copyright guidelines. Please be advised that all comments and suggestions are moderated for clarity, brevity, and appropriateness. We do reserve the right to post as is, decline to post, or edit if comments that contain obscenities or otherwise lack civility and respect for any persons, groups. Links to related posts are encouraged, but bloggers should post original content rather than reposting entire items from other blogs or lists.

CONTENT BEST PRACTICES

All blog items must fall within the purpose of the blog. If the item does not fit within the purpose, it may not be an appropriate item for this blog. Blog posts may be text or video and images can be added if they are related to the content of the item. Before entering a new post into the blog, check that the item has not already been posted.

COPYRIGHT

Contributors shall not upload, post, or otherwise make available on the blog any content protected by copyright without abiding by the doctrine of fair use, or without the express permission of the owner of the copyright. By contributing to the blog, you also acknowledge that your individual entries to the blog are licensed under a Creative Commons license. Your Creative Commons license allows people who use your content in whole or in part, to take the following actions:

-Distribute it
-Copy the work
-Display or perform it publicly
-Make digital public performances of it (e.g. webcasting)
-Shift the work into another format as a verbatim copy