Curation of Health Information
Curation of Health Information
Through my professional practice and the two positions I hold, I work with my multidisciplinary team as well as individually to research health information. As a group, we will discuss specific assignments for the research, but our search habits are similar.
When it comes to looking for reliable health information, my first step tends to be going to the Google search engine. Individually, I enter specific words and see what searches come up; looking up specific words helps to narrow down the search to a degree. I have had some success with this method, other times, finding information that I feel is reliable is challenging. I have researched health information in the hospital and university libraries as they can have a variety of sources. Online databases that I frequently use include National Institutes of Heath (NIH), MedlinePlus and Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). If my research is for a university course assignment, other students that have finished similar courses are also a resource for books and websites.
Reaching out to health specialists in specific disciplines has proven helpful on different occasions when researching a more challenging topic. Working in the hospital and emergency department, many specialists go through on a regular basis, most of them are willing to share their expertise when asked. Depending on the topic of research, I have reviewed health policies and procedures and interviewed heath care educators.
I have researched how to verify websites for reliable information. From that search I have established the following practice: not to use sites without an author's name; I look for established institutions mentioned in or are part of the research article or website; is it a recent article; and check for author bias. I have found that this practice has helped me find some articles to use. Depending on the topic, some the sites have contained advertisements for products and are biased in content.
When I find good information, I save the links to my desktop in a file. There I can read and review in more detail, I research the sources as best possible. Most times, the information is easy to retrieve, there have been occasions where the website states the information that is no longer available.
One tool that I use to put information together include Pinterest, for personal use. I haven't spent a lot of time considering how to sort and store information until I started this course.
After working with various tools such as Pinterest and OneNote, I've chosen to work with Microsoft Sway to curate my health information.