The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA

Abstract #58997

Massey Beveridge, BA, MPhil, MD, Ross Tilley Burn Unit, Sunnybrook & Women's College Health Sciences Centre, 2075 Bayview Avenue, Room D-738, Toronto, ON M4N 3M5, Canada, Kirsteen R Burton, BSc, MBA, Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Toronto, c/o Dr. George Tomlinson, Toronto General Hospital, 200 Elizabeth St., Eaton N. Wing, 6th Floor, Room 232B, Toronto, ON M5G 2C4, Canada, 416 922-8851, kirsteen.burton@utoronto.ca, Andrew Howard, MD, Orthopaedic Surgery, Hospital for Sick Children, Room S107, Elm Wing, 555 University Avenue, Toronto, ON M5G 1X8, Canada, and Warren Holder, John P. Robarts Research Library, University of Toronto, 130 St. George Street, 7th Floor, Toronto, ON M5S 1A5, Canada.

Objectives: the Ptolemy Project aims to answer the question, does access to full-text health information have a positive effect on surgical practice, teaching and research in East Africa? Design: self-reported, multi-mode (paper, e-mail and web-based) survey. Participants: surgeons and researchers practicing within Africa who were Ptolemy Project participants for at least two months prior to initiation of the study; 67 of 97 Ptolemy participants were eligible for the study and 53 of the 67 participated during a two-week response period for an overall response rate of 79%. Main Outcome Measures: qualitative perceived impact of Ptolemy and relevance to three domains of practice: clinical, teaching and research. Results: of 53 participants, 68% spend more than one hour per week using Ptolemy resources; 68% reported Ptolemy had enhanced or greatly enhanced their clinical, teaching and research work and 77% reported the content they found was relevant or very relevant. Full-text journals were the most valued resource and 86% of respondents were satisfied or very satisfied with Ptolemy’s overall performance. Conclusions: Ptolemy delivers popular, relevant content to surgeons and researchers in Africa, and it has made an immediate, positive impact on their work. Incorporating designated research partners from the developing world within a large university library’s community helps build research capacity and provides a practical means to deliver essential full-text health information to researchers in countries that could not otherwise afford it.

Learning Objectives:

• · By meeting with, discussing and sharing ideas with other investigators in both, my own field and others, to whom I have not yet been exposed, I should be able to develop a greater sense for pressing issues within the field. Additionally, I shall be able to identify issues and areas of research that may further interest me when continuing my studies in a PhD. program in 2004 (at that time I shall be pursuing investigations in a different area to those on which I am currently working).
• · Become exposed to poster and presentation styles of other investigators within the field and be able to recognize the most effective approaches. This should result in the creation and development of more effective posters of my own within the months that follow, as well as the generation of ideas for approaches to potential future oral presentations.
• · Review the presentations and posters of other investigators to gain a broader idea of the spectrum of research approaches. This should help to diversify and broaden the experience upon which I can call when designing and applying approaches and methodologies to new hypotheses (and I do have a number of research projects which shall be embarked upon in the approaching year following the conference).
• · Via the presentation and articulation of my own research and results to my peers, I shall be able to demonstrate an increased level of confidence and knowledge when presenting at scientific fora and furthermore, become more aware of the variety of questions and issues that I may be asked to describe. This should be measurable during subsequent presentation where I may be further equipped to discuss any novel issues breached within this conference.

Keywords: Internet, Information Systems

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.