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Dalhousie Bookstore: Health Sciences

Medical Books and More

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Category: Dalhousie

Pre-Inventory Sale on Reference Titles

10% off our in-stock Reference titles until March 5th. The direct link to all the available titles is here, but be aware that it will take a while to load – there are over a thousand titles here. You can also look for specific titles through our keyword search and eligible reference titles will display the 10% discount in their listings. And as always, if you’re looking for a title that we don’t have in stock, we can probably get it in within a few days to a couple of weeks (no discount on titles not currently in stock though).

If you’re in the area and would like to come in and browse the selection, we can allow one person at a time in our Reference section, so if you’d like to make an appointment, you can contact us at jim.regan@dal.ca. (And if you happen to drop by without an appointment when there’s no one in our Reference section, we can probably accommodate you.)

Heart and Stroke Foundation meets Heart Month for 50% Off

 

Last October, the Heart and Stroke Foundation released its quinquennial (that’s every five years – now we’ve both learned a new word) update to its guidelines. As always, those new guidelines take a few months to find their way into revised print publications like the ACLS Provider Manual, so in the meantime, students and medical personnel typically work with a combination of the previous editions and a list of updates (posted as free PDFs here).

Well, since it’s Heart Month, and with the new editions on the horizon, we’ve decided to clear out the 2015 editions at 50% off our regular selling prices. While supplies last, as the saying goes, we’ll have copies of the ACLS, BLS, PALS and PEARS Provider Manuals, and PALS Pocket cards available here for half price. (ACLS Pocket Cards and ECC Handbooks are already sold out.)

“The Cognitive Autopsy” – dissecting the thinking behind medical errors

 

“Behind heart disease and cancer, medical error is now listed as one of the leading causes of death.”

That’s an attention-getter, isn’t it? This line opens the back cover introduction to the just-released, “The Cognitive Autopsy,” by Professor of Emergency Medicine at Dalhousie University and doctor two times over (MD, PhD), Pat Crosskerry.

To continue;

“Of the many medical errors that may lead to injury and death, diagnostic failure is regarded as the most significant. Generally, the majority of diagnostic failures are attributed to the clinicians directly involved with the patient, and to a lesser extent, the system in which they work. In turn, the majority of errors made by clinicians are due to decision making failures manifested by various departures from rationality. Of all the medical environments in which patients are seen and diagnosed, the emergency department is the most challenging. It has been described as a “wicked” environment where illness and disease may range from minor ailments and complaints to severe, life-threatening disorders.”

Dr. Crosskerry , widely published in journals and books on the subjects of patient safety and clinical decision making, award winner in medical education, YouTube resource, and founder of the Canadian Symposium on Patient Safety, has gathered together 42 actual emergency room cases resulting in, “…medical adverse events or near misses.” and examines the thought processes that may have contributed to those less than ideal outcomes. Tellingly, cognitive biases are larger factors than a lack of relevant knowledge in these errors, and by clearly laying out the forces behind these errors, this book helps readers move towards avoiding and eliminating them.

(And while the cases examined here all took place in the ‘wicked environment’ of the emergency room -with all the extra pressures that may make a practitioner more vulnerable to these errors- readers in any branch of medicine could benefit from the lessons taught here.)

“Where did I go wrong?” can be a valuable question, but not if it’s an idle one. Finding the answer to that question can change -even save- lives.

“The Cognitive Autopsy” can be purchased for mail out or pick up from the Dalhousie Bookstore here, (we’re also open to walk-in traffic from 11-3 on weekdays until December 23rd), or through our online affiliate, Login Canada (free shipping on orders placed in 2020), here.

 

Nursing Reference Suggestions, 2020

Most years as we welcome the crowds for Fall Rush, Nursing students will browse our shelves looking for various reference titles to supplement their required textbooks – such options as drug guides, anatomical flash cards, early prep guides (and games) for the eventual NCLEX exams, pocket guides like the ever-popular RNotes, and perhaps a bit of inspiration from Florence Nightingale herself.

Of course, this year isn’t like most years, and since we’re closed to the public, it’s difficult for students to get a general overview of what books are available. (Keyword searches of our website are so annoyingly specific.)

To the rescue comes Login Canada’s annual Nursing Reference and Review Catalog. Usually salted along our shelves in a printed format every year, these free catalogs are also available in a PDF format through this link, and include 20 pages of the most popular reference titles among Nursing students. Login Canada is the distributor of the vast majority of our Nursing titles, so the odds are that whatever you’re looking for is available through their warehouses – and there’s also a very good chance that we have it on the shelves here at the bookstore.

So, if you see anything of interest, just give us a call (902-494-3020) or email (jim.regan@dal.ca) to see if we’ve got it in stock (or, if not, if you’d like us to bring it in). Or, you can order directly from the Login warehouses through the Nursing Catalog Listings at our ‘Virtual Bookstore,’ and the books will be shipped directly to your door. (Login is also extending their free shipping offer through October for anything ordered through the Virtual Bookstore.)

It’s all about adapting to the times sometimes…

The more things change…

As a bookstore, and with more and more titles becoming available in electronic format, we naturally have an increasing number of students who have problems accessing their books. In a very real way, until e-books are as simple to use as paper books, they’re an inferior technology – after all, nobody ever needed tech support for a paper book.

Or did they?…

September 2020 Update – Back Online in these COVID Times…

Well, it’s been a while since there have been any posts added to this site, but this is as good a venue as any to provide an update on our current situation.

Back in March, the bookstore, along with the rest of Dalhousie, shut down entirely for a while as the province was beating back the first wave of the pandemic. Then, over the summer, we returned and began operating in a ‘warehouse’ scenario – mailing orders directly to customers and providing a curbside (more accurately, side door) pickup service.

We continued operating in this capacity through a very …interesting… Rush period, and will be continuing to do so for the foreseeable future, which means that, until further notice, we won’t be allowed to have walk-in traffic. (Clearly a less than ideal situation for those wanting to browse amongst our reference titles.)

There are a few alternatives available, though. If you’re looking for a specific title, the bookstore website has a keyword search at the top right corner of every page. (The search is titled “Course Materials,” but it will search through ALL our books, text and general reference, and a good deal of non-book items as well, like our Littmann stethoscopes, or reflex hammers.)

We also have a partnership with the Canadian distributor of most of our titles, Login Canada, and they have set up a “Virtual Bookstore” through which you can browse and select books and other items, and they will ship them directly to your door. (Login has just under 2 million titles available – including hundreds of thousands of ebooks- so clearly, even in ‘old-normal’ times, they’ll have a much wider selection of medical books than we’ll have on our shelves.)

And of course, you can also connect with us directly at the bookstore. There are some non-book medical items that may not appear on the website’s keyword search, and there are many titles that, while we may not have in stock at the moment, we can bring in without trouble (frequently in as little as 2-4 business days). And, if it’s not something we carry, we might be able to point you towards someone who does.

In the meantime, wash hands, wear masks, keep distance, etc. You know the drill.

 

Time for the Residents to take up Residence

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First Year Residency trainees will be starting the next phase of their medical education in a little over a month, and as they do every year, our primary supplier of medical books, Login Brothers, has produced for us a web- and print catalog of books that may be especially useful to PGY1s and beyond.

The 28-page booklet is divided by discipline, and includes hundreds of titles – with annotations indicating when a book is a Canadian Publication, or when an e-text alternative is available. Books can be ordered for door-to-door delivery, or you can come by the Bookstore in the Student Union Building and have a look at a title before you buy. (While we won’t have every title in the catalog on our shelves at any one time, we can generally order them in within 2-4 business days.)

You can find the website and a link to the PDF version of the catalog at here, or you can drop by for a print copy of the catalog while supplies last.

ACLS 2015 – Not Without Controversies…

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http://emergencymedicinecases.com

 

As we enter Heart and Stroke Month, we’re still awaiting the print edition of the 2015 ACLS guidelines*, but as soon as the new guidelines were adopted, there were already … points of contention among practitioners. For example, the guidelines recommend a compression to breath ratio of 30:2, while EMTs in Seattle (with the highest survival rates for cardiac arrest in the world) do not stop compressions at all – administering breaths in between ongoing compressions. Meanwhile a trial in the New England Journal of Medicine indicates that 30:2 versus continuous compressions should have no impact one way or the other on outcome.

Though it’s natural to think of these guidelines as gospel when they’re released, none of it is written in stone (to use a pair of biblical allusions in a single sentence) – otherwise they wouldn’t need updating every five years – and if there’s a point of debate, it’s best to be familiar with both sides. To that end, EmergencyMedicineCases.com, Canada’s most listened to emergency medicine podcast, has put together a pair of one-hour episodes under the heading of “ACLS Guidelines 2015 – Cardiac Arrest Controversies,” available for streaming or as mp3 downloads. They’ve been up since the guidelines came out in October, but if you haven’t heard them yet, it could make for some worthwhile listening while you wait for the release of the ACLS print edition.

You can find the podcasts, along with text summaries and blog posts, at http://emergencymedicinecases.com/acls-guidelines-2015-cardiac-arrest/

 

*(Due in April -thought we still have 2010 editions with online 2015 updates available until then.)

 

 

 

 

On a Personal Note…

We just learned that we lost one of our favourite customers last month.

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Dr. John Paul Schaefer lived on Prince Edward Island, but regularly came into Halifax and would drop by the store, always looking to expand on his knowledge – even after a ‘retirement’ that included regular trips to work in hospitals in Iqaluit and Pangnirtung, Nunavut, as well as St. Anthony, NL. Dr. Schaefer also twice traveled to to work in a hospital Haiti at the North West Haiti Christian Mission.

He was always a welcome face in the store, and he was the only customer granted full control over the store’s music system (but that’s another story).

He will be missed.

Now that we’ve settled in, we’re giving things away…

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With a large contribution from Elsevier and Login Brothers, anchored by the just released 25th edition of ‘Cecil’s Medicine,’ and additional resources gathered from publishers including Jaypee, Springer, and Borm, we’ve put together quite the residency package. Drop by our new location in the Student Union Building and fill out one of the 500 ballots we’ve printed for the draw on August 4th.

To see the full list of items to be won in this prize pack, go to http://bit.ly/1GCqk8d.

In case you haven’t heard…

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We’ve moved from our home of 15 years on the Carlton Campus and relocated within the main bookstore location in the Dalhousie Student Union Building. If you drop by, our desks are no longer in a direct line of sight to the books in the current floor plan (as you can see, things are a little snug at the moment), but we’re always nearby, so don’t hesitate to ask any of the staff for help – and if they can’t answer your question, they’ll find someone who can.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes…

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Well, it’s been a busy couple of weeks. As our local readers may or may not have heard, the Carleton Campus location of Dalhousie’s Health Sciences Bookstore has closed as a result of renovations going on in its home of the last 15 years. (The rather grainy phonecam sequence above depicts an elapsed time of about 12 hours – and illustrates how much smaller a place looks when it’s been emptied out).

But while we’re out of the Dentistry Building, we’re not out of business. All of that stock missing in the bottom two frames has been moved to the main Bookstore location at Dalhousie’s Student Union Building, and currently sits on temporary shelves there while renovations at the SUB location create a dedicated area for Health Sciences-related stock.

And trust us when we tell you it took a good deal longer to UN-pack than it did to pack.

Meanwhile, the HS staff and contact methods also made the migration, so if you’re trying to contact us remotely, nothing’s changed – and if you’re in the neighbourhood, drop by the Student Union Building and visit us in our new location.

It’s All About The Preparation…

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After graduating it’s first ‘satellite’ class of medical students from the University of New Brunswick’s Saint John campus this spring, Dalhousie is now looking at the other end of the medical education timeline by instituting a ‘pre-med’ option for incoming undergrads this fall. Along with other students beginning their September classes, 100 “Bachelor of Medical Sciences” hopefuls began a 4-year track to a degree that will give them a more effective grounding for post-graduate medical studies.

You can find a brief article about this new initiative here, and learn more from the program’s own site here.

From the Dal News Site: “Nurse practitioners: Better care for patients”

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Nick Pearce Photo

For those who have heard the term but are unfamiliar with the difference between a Nurse and Nurse Practitioner, Nurse Practitioners are registered nurses (RNs), who then obtain a Masters Degree in Nursing, and can, “diagnose, order tests, prescribe drugs and carry out procedures normally restricted to physicians.”

Dalhousie and Ryerson Universites recently released the results of a joint three-year study on the nurse practitioner role and its value to the healthcare system, and summaries of the report can be found here and here. You can also download the full report through this link http://ryerson.ca/apnltc/pdf/FinalReport.pdf.

3D Printers Could Save Your Life

We all know that any skill involving dexterity can be improved with practice, but for surgeons, every patient is different and in a very real sense, every time is a first time. Enter the marriage of Computer Tomography and 3D printing.

Surgeons from Kobe University in Japan have brought the two technologies together to create exact scale models of patients’ cancerous kidneys – using different materials to differentiate between healthy and diseased tissue, and allowing surgeons to see the locations of interior blood vessels before the procedure.

Details and images can be found here, and here’s a short video clip.

 

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