Retirement from professional life is a growing phenomenon as the baby boomer bulge comes face to face with advancing age. In this issue of the BCMJ, Dr Bob Vroom also addresses the topic in his editorial “Retiring gracefully [10]” on page 426. Retirement for physicians means changes on many levels; however, access to the College Library can remain unchanged.

For $100 per year, retired physicians can continue with the same level of library service and access to the resources they came to expect during clinical practice. For instance, retired College registrants who subscribe to library services may receive an unlimited number of expert literature searches, request books and copies of articles, be informed of new clinical advances through the Cites & Bytes newsletter (www.cpsbc.ca/library/cites-bytes [11]), and explore electronic resources (online articles, e-books, and point-of-care tools) through the College website (www.cpsbc.ca/library [12]).

With retirement may come an interest in digging deeper into the literature than a busy practice afforded, and the Finding Medical Evidence workshop (ubccpd.ca/course-group/fme [13]) presented by College librarians in association with UBC CPD will help to improve efficiency and effectiveness with literature searches. 

Physicians looking to begin scaling back their practice may be interested in articles about retirement itself. A simple approach would be to search through the PubMed link on the College Library’s website to maximize access to full-text articles (www.cpsbc.ca/library/search-materials/databases [14]). PubMed is very accommodating to natural language searching, so try “retirement and physicians,” for example. Articles such as the following will be quickly found: “Personal finances for the physician: A primer on maintaining and protecting your earnings” (J Orthop Trauma 2014;28(7S):S50-58), “We need to get another life after retirement” (BMJ 2013;347:f7173), and “Prolonging a sustainable working life among older rural GPs: Solutions from the horse’s mouth” (Rural Remote Health 2013;13:2369).

Best of all, when retired, you’ll have time to find articles and read them too.
—Karen MacDonell
Director, Library Services

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This article is the opinion of the Library of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC and has not been peer reviewed by the BCMJ Editorial Board.