Book discussion course: timely topics for medical students.

Several library faculty members at the Louisiana State University Health Shreveport Health Sciences Library offered a book discussion course as an elective for first-year medical students. This article provides details on how the librarians developed, taught, and evaluated this elective. The librarians took a team-teaching approach, required the students to read two books, and outlined the criteria for participation. At the end of the course, the students completed an evaluation, commenting on positive and negative aspects of the course. The elective proved to be successful, and the librarians look forward to offering the course again in the spring of 2014.

Assessing the FACTTS: an evidence-based medicine and critical appraisal course for medical students.

The Fourth-year Academic Clinical Training and Teaching Selective (FACTTS) is a course taught by medical and library faculty on the practice of evidence-based medicine and critical appraisal of the medical literature. This study assesses the impact of the course on students' understanding of the subject matter by examining three years of pre- and post-test data and addresses whether the number of sessions in the course affects the knowledge gained by the students. The data show an improvement in the students' understanding of course material, but no benefit was found in having two versus three sessions.

Combining history of medicine and library instruction: an innovative approach to teaching database searching to medical students.

Library faculty members at the Health Sciences Library at the LSU Health Shreveport campus offer a database searching class for third-year medical students during their surgery rotation. For a number of years, students completed "ten-minute clinical challenges," but the instructors decided to replace the clinical challenges with innovative exercises using The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus to emphasize concepts learned. The Surgical Papyrus is an online resource that is part of the National Library of Medicine's "Turning the Pages" digital initiative. In addition, vintage surgical instruments and historic books are displayed in the classroom to enhance the learning experience.

A Novel tool for Health Literacy: Using Comic Books to Combat Childhood Obesity.

Childhood obesity remains a serious problem that requires health literacy projects to engage both parents and children in making healthy choices. This paper describes an award-funded project designed by LSU Health Shreveport (LSUHS) faculty from the Health Sciences Library and the Department of Pediatrics who created a comic book to help children and their parents learn practical ways children can make healthier lifestyle choices. LSUHS also collaborated with LSU-Shreveport to recruit a student artist, who illustrated the comic and designed promotional items used to promote the print and online versions of the book throughout the community.