Information @ point of care

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 49, No. 3, April 2007, Page 148 College Library
By: Linda Clendenning Karen MacDonell, PhD, MLIS Judy Neill

It was the need to back up clinical decisions with sound medical knowledge that induced the Vancouver Medical Association to form a Library in 1906, beginning the service that would eventually become the College library. What was crucial to clinical decision making 100 years ago is unchanged today: physicians want information that is authoritative, relevant, and rapid, and they want it where the need arises—the point of care.

The College Library has an excellent collection of point-of-care resources bundled into an electronic database entitled Stat!Ref. One simple search phrase entered into the Stat!Ref textbox gives you access to the full text of the latest edition of 18 top-quality medical texts, including Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, as well as the American College of Physicians’ PIER. PIER is an evidence-based decision-support tool that gives, in modular form, screening, diagnosis, and treatment for some 350 diseases. Each recommendation is accompanied by a graded level of evidence, with links to appropriate resources. Stat!Ref also includes an electronic version of Stedman’s Medical Dictionary and an interactive anatomy tool. College members may access Stat!Ref by logging onto the College’s web site at www.cpsbc.ca, clicking on Library, then selecting the link Electronic Journals and Books on the Library’s main page. Give it a try!

Perhaps the Library’s founding fathers would feel it remiss of us not to mention the original, portable, easy-to-use point of care tool: a ready-reference handbook slipped into the pocket. We also have those.

—Linda Clendenning
—Karen MacDonell
—Judy Neill
Librarians/Co-Managers

Linda Clendenning, Karen MacDonell, PhD, MLIS, Judy Neill. Information @ point of care. BCMJ, Vol. 49, No. 3, April, 2007, Page(s) 148 - College Library.


Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

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