Category: Uncategorized

Supporting Patient Care through Clinical Librarianship

The clinical librarian specialty was developed in the 1970s as a way to offer research expertise to the medical team in light of the explosion in clinical knowledge. The potential benefits of integrating librarians into patient care include better treatment outcomes, reduced costs, and increased efficiency for physicians.

Elizabeth Laera is the senior medical librarian for Brookwood Baptist Health in Birmingham, Alabama. She shares duties with one other full-time librarian and their library serves six hospitals and more than 100 clinics. The library also supports approximately 100 residents across five programs and 40 medical students during their clerkship year.

In 2012, in collaboration with a newly created hospitalist teaching service, she established a clinical librarianship program. Specialists like her integrate into health care settings by participating in morning reports, bedside teaching rounds, and journal clubs; provide clinicians with relevant research as they care for individual patients; and support continuing medical and patient education.

NEJM LibraryHub spoke to Laera about what clinical librarianship looks like at her institution.

Q: What are your duties as a clinical librarian? Let’s talk pre-pandemic first, because I know things have changed in the past several years.

A: Pre-pandemic, one of my main responsibilities was rounding with our general inpatient medicine team. It’s a teaching team, composed of one attending faculty physician, one upper-level internal medicine resident, and four interns. There’s often a pharmacist and maybe a pharmacy resident, and then assorted medical and pharmacy students.

They begin the morning in a conference room and “run the list,” which involves going over what happened overnight with each patient, and what’s going on this morning, and then we talk about the plan for the day. We call this table rounds and it usually takes between 30 minutes [to] an hour. Inevitably, clinical questions come up. It might be something specific like how to titrate diuretic therapy for somebody who has a buildup of fluid in their abdomen from cirrhosis. Or it could be related to a more general teaching discussion about COPD or a particular type of cancer or the drugs used to treat diabetes inpatient vs. outpatient — although drug questions are often best answered by the pharmacist. But even they are sometimes stumped. The teaching is Socratic. If it becomes clear that people are having trouble answering questions about certain topics, I make a note, then later I’ll send everyone a review article or the latest treatment guidelines.

Occasionally, after we’ve run the list, I may accompany the team on the floor and see patients in the ICU and maybe the new admissions too. Sometimes an additional question may come up. My role is to find an answer by googling it or researching it on PubMed®, UpToDate®, or ClinicalKey®, so nobody else has to take the time do this. Most of the time they’re quick questions. Team members have a lot of decisions to make, a lot weighing on them, so I do anything I can to make things easier. I like attending rounds a lot because I learn how medicine works, and it makes me a better librarian.

Q: I understand that the pandemic has changed the way you work with the rounding team. How?

A: COVID put a temporary halt on rounding with large groups. Although this has resumed, I haven’t returned to the floor. The entire rounding process can take up to three hours, and then I have to do the research when I return to the office. So I have to be strategic about the best use of my time, which is during table rounds, which I still attend twice a week.

Another part of my clinical work is attending our internal medicine program’s didactic lectures three times a week at noon. One resident presents a case step by step — as an exercise in clinical decision-making. Usually, there aren’t a lot of questions that come up, but I am available if there are. Afterward, I will send everyone a clinical trial, a review article, [and] some guidelines — something related to what was covered in the lecture.

During the height of the pandemic, the lectures were on Zoom, which I really liked because I could drop links to my research into the chat. I would then send them out later for those who may have missed them. Admittedly, it’s sometimes hard to know if people are actually reading what you send, but at least you’re making them aware that there is something other than an UpToDate entry they should read. Now the sessions are back in-person. Because I have so many other responsibilities, I don’t make it to these every week.

Q: Other clinical duties?

A: I spend the largest portion of my clinical time answering questions specific to a certain patient for doctors. Someone will come up to me and say, “My patient is on this medication with this disease and I need to know more about it” or “I’m doing this surgery tomorrow and have this question about it.”

 Q: How do you appraise the quality of the research you’re collecting?

A: I’ve taken classes in evidence appraisal and listened to lectures about it. But often, because of time pressures, your evaluation has to be quick and dirty. My method of evaluation goes like this: Do I trust the journal? If it’s an NEJM study, I’m going to trust it. Then I look at where the study was completed. For example, if it’s a blood pressure study done in China, it might be a great article, but it probably is not going to be applicable to our majority Black population in Birmingham, Alabama.

I’m more likely to trust a study that’s coming out of a well-resourced country that probably has good quality control methods. Then I’m going to look at whether the conclusion matches the objective. If it doesn’t, that’s a good indication of a bad methodology.

If I come across several studies on the same thing, I’ll use the more recent one or the one that’s in the better journal. If I’m finding a lot of studies, I’ll go looking for a meta-analysis or a systematic review. And if I’m unsure about the methodology, I look to see if they used the librarian in their systematic review. If they did, I have more confidence in the analysis.

 Q: How do you send the result of your searches to clinicians?

A: Typically, I just send them the article, and I may even pull the answer out of the article and quote it in my email. For a more complicated question, I’ll send a list of abstracts, and then we will talk through them together. But what I’ve learned over the years is that most of the time, they just want the answer. They don’t want to read a bunch of articles.

Q: Are you able to index all the research you do in case the same question comes up again?

A: At one point, I created a database of the research I did for every question so I wouldn’t have to duplicate the searches, but I found that I was creating more work for myself trying to log all of that. And then, you run into the issue of medicine constantly changing, so there might be new studies that wouldn’t have been captured in the previous search — especially on topics like cancer or COVID. Sometimes I’ll remember I did a similar search and then just leaf back through my notes.

Q: At its core, clinical librarianship is about helping clinicians take better care of patients. Can you give me an example of a time your work had a direct impact on patient care?

A: It was a late Friday afternoon and I got a call from a doctor from one of our rural hospitals. He had a patient with a C. diff infection who was dying. He had located an article he believed could be helpful with treatment, but he couldn’t access the full text. I went into our inter-library loan system and found a couple of libraries in California that had access to the article. Because of the time difference, I knew they would still be open. I started calling until I found someone who could send us the article. Later, I got an email from the doctor saying he had saved the patient’s life.

This work is very satisfying. It connects me to the health care system and to patient care in ways that often feel very tangible.

 

Fossil-Fuel Pollution and Climate Change

Climate change has a direct impact on human health and medical systems. Underscoring our commitment to elevating awareness of the climate change crisis, NEJM Group publications – the New England Journal of Medicine, NEJM Evidence, and NEJM Catalyst – present a free article series on fossil-fueldriven health harms and effective strategies for reducing their risks.  

 NEJM Resident 360 also offers a podcast and an online discussion in which students, residents, and educators share how they are working with their institutions to incorporate climate change into their curricula.  

 Learn what you can do at www.nejm.org/climate-change 

NEJM Evidence Helps Readers Become Sophisticated Consumers of Clinical Evidence

NEJM Group has launched a new monthly journal: NEJM Evidence.

Led by former NEJM Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey M. Drazen, MD, this peer-reviewed journal publishes innovative, original research to inform clinical decision-making and clinical trial design. NEJM Evidence, the latest journal from NEJM Group, highlights practice-changing original research while giving readers the tools to become critical evaluators of the evidence.

Editor-in-chief Jeffrey Drazen, MD, said it differs from the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in some significant ways. “NEJM publishes clinical trials in which the study design and clinical implications are self-evident,” said Dr. Drazen, who was the top editor at the flagship journal for two decades. “In contrast, NEJM Evidence helps readers understand how trials are assembled, run, and analyzed.”

Capturing the Give and Take of Morning Report

NEJM Evidence will publish high-quality research with clinical significance to everyday practice, review articles, and case studies like other medical journals. But that’s where the similarities with many other publications end. Dr. Drazen said the journal will be a lively read, eschewing the “staidness” of some of its counterparts. For example, its case reports will model themselves after the spirited morning case-based rounding of medical training programs. “We want to emulate morning report, which will also be the name of the section, where people see a case as it unfolds, how the differential diagnosis narrows or widens as new information is gathered. We hope to get these cases from around the world,” said Dr. Drazen.

Welcoming Diverse Voices

Casting a wider net will be a priority for NEJM Evidence, as it seeks out more diversity among its authors, reviewers, and editorial board. “When we evaluate evidence, we’re soliciting help from a broad range of people — with a broad range of experience — to give us the guidance that we need,” said Dr. Drazen. Added Deputy Editor C. Corey Hardin, MD, PhD.: “We think that NEJM Evidence should be a vehicle for incorporating new voices and voices that haven’t had as big a presence in the debate over clinical evidence and its generation.”

Another goal of the journal is to create a community of readers who engage in conversations. “Editors at publications like the New England Journal of Medicine have a lot of discussion about the details and the methods in the article and the validity of the conclusions,” said Dr. Hardin. “We want NEJM Evidence to be a forum where our readers can engage in that kind of lively conversation about the conclusions and also about the process of reaching those conclusions.” Conversations about articles won’t happen in the traditional “Letters to the Editor” format but will evolve in real-time on Twitter with occasional commentary and follow-up from the NEJM Evidence editors.

Offering Innovative Content

The journal will showcase other types of novel and thought-provoking content, including:

    • Is Noninferior Not Inferior? Stats STAT! With this animated video, we explore the basis for non-inferiority trials, the meaning of margins of non-inferiority, and how non-inferiority trials can be interpreted.

      Tomorrow’s Trial: short pieces highlighting popular clinical practices that lack good evidence — inviting clinicians-readers to propose clinical trials to test those practices.

    • Patient Platform: participants in research studies share insights into the patient experience.
    • Trial by Fire: a podcast featuring five-minute discussions between a person associated with a published trial and a critic of the trial.
    • Stats, STAT!: brief animated videos that explain a statistical concept relevant to an article published in the current issue.

NEJM Evidence focuses on a broad audience of readers, including physicians and other clinicians practicing in all types of settings, trainees, residents and fellows, hospitalists, academic clinicians, clinical trialists, basic scientists, and people in the pharmaceutical industry.

Executive Editor Chana Sacks, MD, MPH, said, “NEJM Evidence tries to turn the traditional hierarchy of presenting research, where the methods section is almost an afterthought, on its head. So often, when reading journals, our eyes glaze over at the methods section, or we skip over it completely. We’re going to make that part fun and exciting,” said Dr. Sacks.

Who’s Who at NEJM Evidence

NEJM Evidence editors have a wide range of interests and experience. Editor-in-Chief Jeff Drazen, MD, a pulmonologist, joined the New England Journal of Medicine as editor-in-chief in 2000. In addition to his position as editor-in-chief of NEJM Evidence, he is also NEJM Group Editor.

Executive Editor Chana Sacks, MD, MPH, is an internist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), a medicine instructor at Harvard Medical School, and the former editor of NEJM Images in Clinical Medicine. She is also co-director of MGH’s Center for Gun Violence Prevention.

Deputy Editor C. Corey Hardin, MD, PhD., is a pulmonary and critical care specialist at MGH. He is also an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, a joint Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology faculty member, and a physician-investigator in pulmonary medicine at Mass General Research Institute.

Statistical Editor Sharon-Lise Normand, MSc, PhD., is the S. James Adelstein Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School and professor of biostatistics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The diverse editorial board includes practicing physicians, academic physicians, public health activists, health economists, and researchers worldwide.

NEJM Evidence brings a dedicated focus to providing context and critical evaluation of a trial’s methods and results. A site license guarantees full access to all NEJM Evidence content. Contact us to obtain a quote for a site license or find out how this new title can support clinical care and research at your institution. Sign up for the This Week email alert, featuring the monthly table of contents and weekly articles updates. Follow us on Twitter to keep current on the latest article posts and discussions.

New NEJM.org feature: Research Summaries

Introducing a new way to assess important results and conclusions — as well as limitations and remaining questions — of RCTs and other seminal original research published on NEJM.org.  Accompanying multiple research articles each week on NEJM.org, the Research Summary feature helps readers efficiently identify the Original Articles that warrant a deeper look, while at the same time learning key findings from the latest studies. Browse the growing collection at www.nejm.org/research-summaries.

NEJM Healer Demystifies, Teaches, and Assesses Diagnostic Skills

Clinical reasoning is notoriously tough to teach, let alone assess. It involves complicated cognitive processes, demands lots of in-person instructional time, and is context-specific.

NEJM Healer, a new online learning application from NEJM Group, was designed to change that. NEJM Healer teaches and assesses clinical reasoning by breaking down the patient diagnosis process into discrete steps, providing learners with detailed feedback on how their thinking brings them closer to or further from the correct diagnosis. The cases are appropriate for medical, physician assistant, and nurse practitioner programs and for residents who want to hone their clinical reasoning skills.

“There has been a broad change in medical education, from a focus on knowledge to one on skills and application,” said Raja-Elie E. Abdulnour, MD, lead editor and director of educational innovation at NEJM Group and the creator of NEJM Healer. Yet, educators struggle to teach the physician’s thought process.

Most students enter their clerkship without a mastery of clinical reasoning, according to a 2017 Journal of General Internal Medicine study in which 70% of clerkship directors surveyed rated students’ knowledge of clinical reasoning concepts prior to clerkship as poor to fair. “Clinical reasoning is something that people have only begun to dissect in the past 20 years,” explained Dr. Abdulnour. “That’s in large part thanks to our understanding of the cognitive models at the foundation of clinical reasoning.” Many schools have added clinical reasoning modules or lectures to their curriculum, but most are didactic and lack interaction with patients—real or virtual.

Dr. Abdulnour and the NEJM Healer team began designing and developing the app in late 2019, with advice from national leaders in clinical reasoning education. The team piloted the application in 2020 with over a dozen medical schools and physician assistant programs to optimize the user experience and look closely at assessment. With the help of a world-class network of medical experts and authors from more than a dozen institutions, the team built a library of cases and the medical content needed to drive these encounters.


NEJM Healer provides students with a variety of adult medicine patient cases akin to what a clinician might encounter in real practice. Student users triage the patient, take a history, perform a thorough virtual physical examination, and consider lab and imaging results as they narrow their differential diagnosis. NEJM Healer graphically displays how each finding affects the probability of the presence or absence of the diseases in their differential, giving students insight into how an experienced diagnostician would work their way through the clinical reasoning process. NEJM Healer offers a library of detailed illness scripts and diagnostic schemas to support the learning process, bringing together knowledge and reasoning.
What makes NEJM Healer unique, said Dr. Abdulnour, is its ability not only to teach clinical reasoning but also to assess students’ mastery down to a very granular level. Its proprietary, algorithmic assessment provides summary performance scoring and detailed feedback on students’ clinical reasoning, comparing student decision-making to that of experienced physicians. It also has the clinical rigor of NEJM experts behind it. “We convened a wide array of experts in clinical reasoning as well as academic clinicians to consult with us to create our content,” said Dr. Abdulnour. The tool’s developers also beta-tested it at multiple institutions, and early users helped shape the current version. One medical school has allowed more than 400 students to use NEJM Healer instead of its Objective Structured Clinical Exam.
Instructors can integrate cases into their curriculum or use them as a point-in-time assessment or across the broader curriculum spanning pre-clinical and clinical learning. “When you get to the end of the case, it’s almost like you just spent an entire day with an expert,” said Dr. Abdulnour. “No instructor would ever have that kind of time to sit with students and give that level of feedback.” A typical student completes a case in about 20 minutes before spending time on the performance feedback the application provides.

Institutions can buy the complete NEJM Healer library or select case bundles. Educational Management Solutions is the distributor of NEJM Healer. For more information, visit www.simulationiq.com/nejm-healer.

Working toward More Diversity among Medical Librarians

In 2022, Shannon Jones will become president of the Medical Library Association, the second African American to head up the organization in 123 years. Jones is director of libraries at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. The school is a standalone academic medical center that confers degrees in medicine, pharmacy, nursing, dentistry, public health, and an array of other health professions such as physical therapy and health administration. The Medical University of South Carolina Libraries serves all six colleges. Jones also serves as director of the Regional Medical Library for Region 2 of the Network of the National Library of Medicine serving members in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The majority of librarians, including health sciences librarians, are white women. Jones has made it a priority to hire and retain employees who are diverse across many dimensions and to mentor librarians of color across the country.

Q: How successful have the efforts been to increase diversity in the profession?

 A: In recent years, there has been significant investment in this. All of our professional associations have had diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as goals for a very long time. I think the reasons you don’t see more diversity are complex. My understanding of the reasons is largely based on anecdote — specifically my conversations with African American librarians. I think people go to library school, but then they have difficulty getting hired. And if they get hired, it becomes a retention issue. If they’re not treated well or the library was not prepared for a diverse voice or to include someone who is different from the majority, then they end up leaving the profession. It’s troubling that we haven’t moved the needle much on this.

Q: How are you trying to address DEI at your library?

 A: We try to take a whole-systems approach to diversity — not just when it comes to race and ethnicity, but also skillset and background. I have a librarian who used to be a basic science researcher and two who have master’s degrees in public health. We also employ other professionals with advanced degrees in areas such as social work and IT. I didn’t realize how many Muslim students were on our campus until we hired a librarian who is Muslim and our Muslim students gravitate towards her. You don’t know some of the skills that people bring to the table until you allow that diversity to flourish.

Q: Can you talk about your recruitment approach?

A: First, we make sure that the search committee is trained in issues of diversity. For example, they receive training on implicit bias because all of us have biases that impact our decisions. I also make sure the committee has demographic data on our current staff as well as an awareness of the racial and ethnic demographic. I look at where we have gaps. For instance, in 2017, all of our male librarians retired or left, so that was an opportunity to try to recruit a male librarian. For an IT position, I’m conscious about finding good female candidates. But the bottom line is that we are going to hire the best of the best. I also like to cast a wide net for candidates.

Q: How do you do that?

A: I post the openings in all the usual places — ALA, MLA, SLA. But I also contact people I have met at conferences who are doing exciting work. I search LinkedIn profiles and then reach out to people — cold calling, so to speak. And I’ll look through papers or posters from conferences I’ve attended. I keep a running list of people doing interesting work with the idea that if someday I have [an open] position, I can connect with them.

Q: What’s your approach to retaining people?

 A: Retention starts the moment that we offer somebody a job. It could be something as simple as paying their relocation expenses. We also need to offer them a fair and competitive salary. I don’t ever want to be in the situation where an employee realizes that the person sitting next to them doing the same job is making $20,000 more than they are.

And then we invest in them. I encourage my librarians to do career development plans so that they are thinking about where they want to see their career going and then I try to help get them there. We invest financially in making sure that their skillset and knowledge are always top-notch and that they’re able to present at conferences and to publish. I want them to feel like they’re getting value out of their career and adding value to the campus.

I try to be flexible with people in terms of letting them set the tone for their work and how they accomplish it. I ask them what they need to be successful. We haven’t had a whole lot of turnover in our librarian ranks.

Q: Have you been successful in recruiting and retaining a diverse staff?

A: Yes. We’re diverse in terms of race and ethnicity, gender, discipline, and [the] type of work our employees do. Take a look at our staff profiles.

Q: What work do you do outside your library to support health sciences librarians of color?

A: I do a lot of mentoring work. One example is a Chat and Chew weekly meeting, which I started early in the pandemic. A group of us — usually about 20 people — meet virtually every Friday just to check-in, decompress, and support each other. Some of my Black counterparts are working in environments where they’re the only one and it can be hard. So sometimes you need to be among people who share that experience. In our group, there’s a lot of emphasis on wellness. For example, several of our members introduced a few of us to plant therapy.

I’m also proud of the virtual book club [MLA Reads], open to anyone across the country, that I created in 2018 and co-lead. Since 2018, 33 discussion group leaders have facilitated nearly 350 participants in discussing three books. We meet in groups of between nine and 11 people, and we all read the same book — once a year. The group evolved out of an implicit bias training that we held at the 2018 Medical Library Association meeting. After the training, people wanted to process the implications of biases on their work, in their libraries, and in their personal lives.

The first book we discussed was Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald. We also read The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias by Dolly Chugh. We just read Damon Tweedy’s Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine and in the fall we’re reading Caste: The Origins of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.

We discuss each book over four sessions, including some supplemental programming. For example, we had a supplemental session on how to engage in critical conversations and one on implicit bias, microaggressions, and stereotypes. And it’s not just about race. Regardless of whether you are red, black, blue, or green, you’ve probably had an instance where you felt like you were not supposed to be at the table or in a certain space. Maybe you are a female in a male-dominated profession. The books I mentioned earlier have pushed people to really think about what privilege means to them. What does oppression mean to them and what does it look like every day in the workplace?

The book groups have also been a good networking opportunity for people because members are not just health sciences librarians. We have community college librarians, academic librarians, and public librarians, for example. Participants get MLA continuing education credits. Some of our members have been inspired by our group and started similar book groups in their own institutions.

Q: Tell us about your work with the African American Medical Librarians Alliance (AAMLA), which I understand is a caucus within the MLA.

A: There was a period when African Americans did not have seats at the MLA’s decision-making tables and weren’t serving on committees nor receiving the highest awards. AAMLA began as a social group in the 1980s, when members gathered for dinner at MLA’s annual meeting. In 2000, it became an official special interest group of MLA to strategically address this. Things have changed a lot thanks to the AAMLA. In 2016, we had our first black president. The librarian who is delivering the prestigious annual Janet Doe Lecture this year is African American. And we have the first African American woman getting the association’s highest honor, the Marcia C. Noyes award. One of my colleagues at Morehouse School of Medicine was elected to the board and we had three African Americans elected to our nominating committee.

The AAMLA is also working on documenting the history of African Americans within the MLA. Additionally, we try to connect with new African American members early so that they know that the AAMLA exists to support them in becoming the best librarians possible.

Q: Do you have any other advice for other librarians who would like to increase diversity at their libraries?

A: One piece of advice is from one of my mentors who told me that you should always be lifting as you climb. The other is that we need to normalize self-care. I’m trying to get better at this myself.  Diversity, equity, and inclusion work is tiring because you’re constantly getting pushed back, you’re constantly hitting walls. You might have some successes but you’re going to have some challenges and so you have to take care of yourself.

 

If you’d like to learn more about Chat and Chew or the MLA virtual book group, contact Shannon Jones at JoneShan@musc.edu.

 

 

 

 

New Journal Coming Soon from NEJM Group

NEJM Group, the publisher of the New England Journal of Medicine, is excited to introduce a new monthly digital journal, NEJM Evidence. Led by former NEJM Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey M. Drazen, MD, this new peer-reviewed journal challenges physicians to engage in a more meaningful way with clinical evidence, clinical trial design, and clinical decision-making.
With NEJM Evidence, your patrons will learn how to evaluate evidence more effectively — and to transform the best new research ideas into sound clinical practice.
NEJM Evidence will launch in early 2022. Please visit this page to learn more.

VisualDx’s Project IMPACT Addresses Racism and Implicit Bias in Medicine

Project IMPACT (IMPACT stands for Improving Medicine’s Power to Address Care and Treatment) is a global effort to reduce disparities in medicine and highlight ways to bridge gaps of knowledge and improve healthcare outcomes for patients of color. NEJM Group is collaborating with the Skin of Color Society (SOCS) and VisualDx to highlight information gaps and knowledge resource solutions designed to improve diagnosis and care for patients of color.

Dark skin is significantly underrepresented in medical literature and curricula, comprising an average of just 4.5% of images in medical textbooks. Consequently, clinicians of all licensures and specialties are often insufficiently trained to recognize disease patterns in patients of color.

“Lack of sufficient medical education on darker skin has had direct implications on health disparities in patients of color,” said Nada Elbuluk, MD, MSc, FAAD, a board-certified dermatologist and Director of Clinical Impact at VisualDx. “Project IMPACT was created with the understanding that a far-reaching, collaborative effort is needed to eliminate systemic racism in healthcare. I’m honored to lead this charge and help build a global community dedicated to transforming medicine for the good of all patients.”

 

Recognizing how diseases present on all skin types is key in reducing diagnostic error and improving patient care. For more than 20 years VisualDx (www.visualdx.com/diversity) has worked with board-certified physicians across the globe to collect hundreds of thousands of professional medical images displaying the full spectrum of disease presentations across skin types. Project IMPACT includes a gallery of images comparing disease presentation in different skin colors.

Lyme disease depicted in dark skin and light skin. Images provided by VisualDx.

To further honor its commitment to reducing healthcare bias in the skin of color through education, information, and shared resources, Project IMPACT has created a free, comprehensive resource library comprised of articles and books on healthcare disparities, dermatological conditions in people of color, as well as resources for professionals and consumers.

Take the Pledge and Join the #ProjectIMPACT Community

Improving health equity is a goal that will take a collaborative and dedicated effort. There are many ways to be part of #ProjectIMPACT and help make a difference. Students, educators, clinicians, librarians, and patients working toward greater health equity are encouraged to take the pledge to make an impact and to share their stories on social media using the hashtag #ProjectIMPACT.

To learn more and join Project IMPACT, visit projectimpact.org.

 

NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery Doubles Publication Frequency

The mission of NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery is to accelerate the transformation of how health care is delivered. In its first year of publication, the peer-reviewed publication has become a must-read for many.

Starting with the January 2021 issue, the online journal has doubled its publication frequency. “We’re doing this in response to audience interest and to accommodate the large volume of high-quality manuscripts we’ve been receiving,” says Editorial Director Edward Prewitt.

NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery spotlights the most promising ideas for transforming health care delivery from experts around the world. Its audience includes clinicians, clinical leaders, health care executives, and researchers. From the start, the NEJM Catalyst journal has attracted many renowned authors. “We’re the second journal launched by NEJM Group in more than 200 years,” explains Prewitt. “But that halo effect lasts for only so long. Our emphasis on practical innovations resonates with readers and authors.”

Much of the focus during the last year has been on Covid-19, Prewitt says. “The pandemic has been like an earthquake for care delivery, so it’s been the backdrop of a lot of our articles, even if an article is not directly about Covid-19,” he says. Topics have ranged from the economic and clinical devastation suffered by provider organizations to lessons learned from the transition to telemedicine to best practices for getting patients with chronic illnesses back on track. A sampling of popular Covid-19–related NEJM Catalyst content includes;

NEJM Catalyst has maintained its focus on non-pandemic topics as well. Some of the most-read articles include:

“This assortment of articles shows the breadth of Catalyst content — everything from leadership to payment models to health care technology. They are emblematic of our focus on practical, how-to content,” says Prewitt.

The NEJM Catalyst Insights Council, a group of executives, clinical leaders, and clinicians who monitor the pulse of health care delivery by participating in monthly surveys, has increased from 12,000 to over 16,000 members, with growing international participation from members in over 69 countries. “We have a large international readership because so many of our topics are global, such as patient engagement, improved outcomes, health care technology, and value-based care,” says Prewitt. Recent Insights Council reports have revealed that the majority of Council members do not believe the pandemic will be a tipping point for value-based care and that Covid-19 has exacerbated the longstanding problem of burnout among physicians and nurses.

NEJM Catalyst events will relaunch in 2021, after a hiatus due to the pandemic. Through keynote talks and moderated panels, the quarterly virtual events will address a common theme: Health Care in 2030. “We’ll be exploring which changes brought on by the pandemic and other disruptors will last, which won’t, and what health care delivery will look like in the coming years,” says Prewitt.

Thomas H. Lee, MD, MSc, editor-in-chief of NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery, says that the past year has been a very mixed one for the health care industry. “The good news is that health care workers have really risen to the occasion and done an amazing job meeting the needs of patients and dealing with threats that were not completely understood. And they’ve done it with compassion — not worrying about the immediate financial consequences,” he says. “The bad news is that this has been financially catastrophic for virtually every health care organization, with the exception of the insurers, and the pandemic has revealed the weaknesses in the fee-for-service funding mechanism.”

Whatever the future holds, NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery will continue to present the very best ideas to improve care delivery around the world. Many institutions are already benefiting from full access to this new journal. If you haven’t spoken to us about purchasing a site license, we hope that you will consider doing so here. To find out how to gain access for your patrons, please contact us at institutionsales@nejm.org.

 

 

 

 

NEWS: NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery Is Now Monthly

The current pandemic has initiated permanent changes to health care delivery, and new challenges require the most innovative ideas from around the world.

The quality and volume of our submissions have never been higher, and in response, NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery will be transitioning from 6 to 12 issues per year beginning with the January 2021 issue. You’ll receive even more of the following:

• Expert articles
• Case studies
• Podcast interviews
• Insights reports

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Catalyst Connect, which includes the table of contents for each new issue, plus a weekly review of the most current actionable ideas and innovations from NEJM Catalyst
Editors’ Picks, which showcases content selected by our editorial team

Looking for ideas to promote NEJM Catalyst to your community? Go to the librarian resources section on NEJM LibraryHub to download marketing tools.