I need some help finding links for medical journal articles on pandemic influenza. I’ve looked on our site hi and lo but can’t find precisely what I’m looking for. I have an opportunity to inform a very busy rural family practice office with seven physicians and three physician assistants on the subject and give them some professional literature. The managing director is a good friend and is open to learning but insists that the docs in the practice are too busy to “bone up on the subject”, so for now, they’ll fall back on doing whatever the CDC alerts them to do. He’d be happy to read anything I give him and present it to the staff, if topical. He’d be open to rx’ing for appropriate antivirals if convinced, as well.
Specifically, I thought I’ve seen articles on pediatric practice journals, the Lancet and others that may have some specific information appropriate for a family practice/internal medicine/pediatrics office. The CIDRAP site is excellent but I’m wondering what’s out there targeted to medical professionals.
AI: It is hard to locate specifically what you might need, since I don’t know those practitioners as well as you do. You might do best by going to
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi
and entering the search terms PANDEMIC INFLUENZA and scanning the article titles for likely candidates. Since there are 4400 articles containing those two words, you might want to add more words to your search criteria to narrow it further.
Others may have specific recommendations for you, but I think you may do better by searching PubMed on your own, using your knowledge of your Family Practice MDs and PAs.
Thanks, Dennis, I’ll try searching nih. Specifically, I’m looking for recent articles on how to ramp up one’s practice for pandemic influenza. Something orientated to a generalist’s practice. This practice is starting to think, but only in a very general way, about how to manage care in a crisis, telemedicine, etc. Right now, they quote the CDC and say there’s nothing to prepare for at this time, we’ll wait to hear what the State says to do. The State plan, however, is inadequate.
Here is one possibility:
American College of Physicians
The health care response to pandemic influenza
Ann Intern Med. 2006 Jul 18;145(2):135–7. Epub 2006 Jun 26.
PMID: 16801625
Link to abstract
“The threat of an H5N1 influenza virus (avian flu) pandemic is substantial. The success of the current U.S. influenza pandemic response plan depends on effective coordination among state and local public health authorities and individual health care providers.”
See this, available via PubMed (www.pubmed.gov)
Am Fam Physician. 2006 Sep 1;74(5):783–90. Avian influenza: preparing for a pandemic. Juckett G. It’s a good overview.
I am not a doctor, but I do have a nifty little Med ResearchPro widget on my Mac, and I can turn up a lot of material in a hurry. I can’t paste articles here, though. If you’d like for me to send a few view articles via email this evening, please email me at inkysmailbox at yahoo.com.
Thanks all! That’s right on point Dennis. Do they let non med professionals see the whole article? I’ll just print out the abstracts for now. InKy, I’m very grateful, will contact you back channel.
Does anyone remember seeing something in a Pediatrics Journal recently or am I mistaken? I also want to find any recent articles on “out of the box” thinking for practice management. I called a physician practice management friend but she wasn’t really up on the subject, told me no need to be concerned, it’s a bird disease, leave it up to the CDC to tell us what to do, docs are busy, don’t bother them.
Here’s another question-have any fluwikians been sucessful in convincing their health care providers to rx antibiotics/antiviral/etc and if so, did presenting any literature help persuade them sucessfully?
May I suggest that you consider creating a FURL archive at www.furl.net. A FURL archive is immensely useful because it’s a library you can readily access and share. Here’s an example of one I set up a couple of years ago for a friend who was putting together an online library for medical treatment compliance: http://www.furl.net/members/AlignMap. The deal is, once you’ve archived your stuff, you can post the link to it, and then other medical practices can look at the same material.
Al,
From the Journal of Infectious Diseases:
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JID/journal/contents/v194nS2.html?erFrom=3691366764059331668Guest
New from CDC:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol12no11/06-0255.htm
Theses articles and many other good ones are on: http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/panflu/index.html
out-of-the-box:
Promising cure to URTI pandemics, including the Avian flu: has the final solution to the coming plagues been discovered? Part 1: http://tinyurl.com/my57b Part 2: http://tinyurl.com/h3tdo
Nanotechnology’s latest oncolytic agent: silver, cancer, & infection associations http://tinyurl.com/y6mabe
Pfwag - I’m constructing a select bibliography with articles from refereed medical journals for the same purpose. I’ll be happy to e-mail you what I find if you’ll give me your e-mail address. Mine is jerebishopfranco@aol.com. And I’m going to check out these links as well. I’m particularly looking for articles written by medical doctors (because doctors listen to other doctors) in journals such as The Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine, etc. They tend to find these very credible.
Exactly, History Lover. It’s amazing how much ignorance is out there with some doctors when it comes to public health issues. Another doctor friend and PA both laughed in derision and clucked like chickens last winter when I brought the subject up in a low key way. Having walked around the food markets in Guangzhoo and Changsha makes the reality of our one world community a little more compelling. And having friends quarantined in SE Asia on recent trips broadens one’s perspective as well.
Al, Your approach is valid. I work at a major medical center/med school, and I know that docs respond to med journal articles—they relate to these references. When I had my annual physical this week, I went in with copies of articles and a recent Reuters reference that said the manufacturer is now saying there is plenty of Tamiflu in pharmacies for the regular flu season. I told him how concerned I was, and my articles seemed to give him confirmation and ease his mind about giving me Rx’s. I got Tamiflu for me and my spouse. I’m glad that I did it this way; if I hadn’t had proof, it could have been more difficult. He was basically unaware of the current state of AI; they just don’t have the time…he was answering pages and doing other things at the same time…they are really overworked most of the time.
Yes, Loui, they are grossly overworked. My father was one so I have some sympathy for them. But still, I’m a professional and you bet I’m up on all the major issues that affect my discipline. This family practice office serves thousands, a population of Medicaid dependant folks and children. The local hospital has one ventilator, serves a community of 6000+.
On the wiki, there’s scientific papers and pay close attention to the Pub Med search function.
It’s best to give family medicine docs family practice articles, btw. See link.
Thanks Dem, the American Academy of Family Physicians site is perfect.
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