"With UpToDate, students and interns may be as capable of teaching the resident (or attending) as visa versa"

From Wachter's World:

"In 1984, one resident even wrote a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine called “Ripping and Filing Journal Articles,” taking the Journal to task for its habit of beginning an article on the back of the last page of the previous one (which meant the page needed to be photocopied if you wanted to tear both articles out of your personal copy of the journal). Fair point, but talk about a resident who needed to get a life.

Today, as in so many other parts of our lives, the computer, with its magical access to the universe of on-line resources, has democratized the learning of clinical medicine. At UCSF, by the time morning rolls around, the students and interns have often already read the on-line UpToDate synopsis of the topic at hand, and may be as capable of teaching the resident (or attending) about it as visa versa."

Note: UpToDate is a peer reviewed medical information resource (paid, not free access) published by a medical company called UpToDate, Inc. It is available both via the Internet and offline. An update is published every four months. The material is written by over 3600 clinicians and has over 7300 topics. The website was launched in 1992 by Dr. Burton D. Rose along with Dr. Joseph Rush. A new online subscription for 1 year costs $495, $195 for trainees (source: Wikipedia).

References:

Substituting Coffee Cake for Journal Articles: Another Unforeseen Consequence of IT. Wachter's World.
Are You Dependent on UpToDate for Your Clinical Practice?
Small association between use of UpToDate and reduced patient length of stay, lower mortality (study sponsored by UTD) http://goo.gl/zSG8R
95% of junior doctors consider electronic textbooks the most effective source of knowledge. 70% of junior doctors read the medical literature in response to a specific patient encounter. BMJ, 2011. http://goo.gl/QZyJE
Image source: UpToDate.

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