What is it?
It is a newish blog “for faculty, residents and students at medical schools and teaching hospitals that highlights innovation in academic medicine.” You can find the blog at http://wingofzock.org
“Wing of Zock was created to be the online community of choice for faculty, residents, students, and executives at medical schools and teaching hospitals. Through a blog format, we hope to provide a venue for practitioners of academic medicine to share success stories; and to help academic medical centers (AMCs) prepare for health care transformation by sharing best practices. We will highlight innovations in clinical care, community engagement, medical information, technology and more. It is our goal to create an open community of learning that features idea sharing, communication, and robust discussion.”
Why is this of interest and helpful to PubMed users?
The entry for Wednesday, March 28, 2012 is titled Utility, Development, and Practice: The Learning Curve of Clinical Practice Guidelines
In the MeSH Database we are offered information about a PubMed publication type:
Practice Guideline [Publication Type]
Work consisting of a set of directions or principles to assist the health care practitioner with patient care decisions about appropriate diagnostic, therapeutic, or other clinical procedures for specific clinical circumstances. Practice guidelines may be developed by government agencies at any level, institutions, organizations such as professional societies or governing boards, or by the convening of expert panels. They can provide a foundation for assessing and evaluating the quality and effectiveness of health care in terms of measuring improved health, reduction of variation in services or procedures performed, and reduction of variation in outcomes of health care delivered.
Year introduced: 2008(1992)
As librarians OR information gathers OR information disseminators OR information guiders OR data curators who use PubMed to search for published biomedical literature. We take advantage of a controlled vocabulary but are not involved in the delivery of medicine. Therefore it is of great interest to read about the creation and implementation of Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs).
This is not the only Zock blog entry I have found of interest. I recommend their postings as a source of enrichment for understanding not just the vocabulary but also the thinking of health care practitioners. For enlightenment on health care issues I would think the audience for these blog postings would be universal.
In case you are curious about their name, please read “our name” on their link http://wingofzock.org/about/
