LibGuides: RN to BSN Program: Medical Tools

Medical Terminology & Dictionaries

Need a definition of a medical term? Try the following:

MedLinePlus Medical Encyclopedia
"The A.D.A.M. Medical Encyclopedia includes over 4,000 articles about diseases, tests, symptoms, injuries, and surgeries. It also contains an extensive library of medical photographs and illustrations."
Understanding Medical Words: A Tutorial from the National Library of Medicine
This Flash-based tutorial is aimed at health consumers rather than health professionals, but you may find it a quick refresher on medical terms.

Health Statistics

National Center for Health Statistics
This division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gathers statistics on all manner of health topics, from aging and birth rates to diseases and physical activity. The place to start looking for health statistics
2012 Statistical Abstract: Health & Nutrition
Statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau that cover "health expenditures and insurance coverage, including Medicare and Medicaid, medical personnel, hospitals, nursing homes and other care facilities, injuries, diseases, disability status, nutritional intake of the population, and food consumption."
CHARTing Health Information for Texas
A web site "designed to provide a comprehensive collection of links to publicly available health and health determinants data down to the county level (or better whenever possible) for the state of Texas from reliable and authoritative providers of information."
Texas Health Care Information Collection
Links to data from the Texas Department of State Health Services' Center for Health Statistics
County Health Rankings
A joint effort of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, this site ranks counties on various health factors within their states. An interesting way to compare health characteristics in various locales.
Health Data Tools and Statistics
A thorough collection of health statistics from the Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce, a collaboration of U.S. government agencies, public health organizations and health sciences libraries.

Drug Information

IBM Micromedex
Micromedex Solutions is an excellent source of drug information and is used by many pharmacies. It's available only to ACC students and staff, and requires logging in with your ACCeID and password if you are not using an ACC computer. You can also get an accompanying app for drug info on the go.

There are many online drug information sources available. The following are some good options:

Drug Information Portal from the National Library of Medicine
Searches in this database pull results from a wide range of government databses and will even connect to information in clinical trials and journal articles via Pubmed.
Drug Information
Another research guide, similar to this one, that focuses just on finding drug information. You can find many authoritative drug sources here.

Historical Medical Resources

There are many hisotircal medical resources available online. However, do not use these if you are seeking information on current research or clinical practice -- use these for historical purposes only.

The Medical Heritage Library
Over 30,000 searchable digital books and other items related to medicine. A great place to look for old illustrations.
History of Medicine from the U.S. National Library of Medicine
The National Library of medicine provides access to many of their resources on the history of medicine, including books, films, photographs, and more.

Gale Interactive: Human Anatomy

Gale Interactive: Human Anatomy This link opens in a new window
A great tool for learning body structures. Rotate, separate, and zoom in on various body parts and systems to gain a deeper understanding of the bodies you'll be helping to keep healthy.
Manipulate and explore 3D models to better visualize and understand human anatomy with system and region focused activities. Reference and periodical content provide additional context for further understanding.

Other Anatomy & Graphics

Zygote Body, originally called Google Body, is an anatomy tool that allows you to manipulate a virtual human body. You can highlight various body systems and rotate the images into different views. Structures are named and you can pin them to help in studying. This tool works best with the Chrome browser and may not work with some computers' video cards. A free sign-up is required.

Human Body Maps is an interactive anatomy tool, but with the ability to rotate images in 3D. Clicking structures retrieves relevant text.
InnerBody is also an interactive anatomy system that allows you to study particular body systems
The Medical Animation Library from the Penn Medicine website provides links to many medical animations arranged by body system and medical specialty.
The Wellcome Library has over 100,000 images related to the history of medicine available to download free under a Creative Commons license.
Eskeletons from the University of Texas Anthropology Department. A great way to study the human skeleton -- and the skeletons of other primates. Details photographs can be studied from several viewpoints.
Open-i from the National Library of Medicine. Open-i "enables search and retrieval of abstracts and images (including charts, graphs, clinical images, etc.) from the open source literature, and biomedical image collections."
The U.S. National Library of Medicine's Images from the History of Medicine collection provides access to over 70,000 digitized images, including portraits, photographs and posters.

Diseases and Conditions

MedlinePlus
This site from the U.S. National Library of Medicine, provides up-to-date authoritative information on a wide range of health issues and links to national advocacy and health groups related to specific diseases and conditions. Good for patient education information, but also useful for healthcare professionals.

Although the ACC libraries have many resources with detailed information on diseases and conditions, you might find the following sites useful for finding basic background information.

CDC Diseases & Conditions
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is charged with tracking a wide range of diseases, and provides up-to-date information on them. This can be a good place to look for statistics, and information is often grouped into professional and public approaches.
Mayo Clinic Diseases & Conditions
The Mayo Clinic has long been a leader in providing quality health care. This site has brief patient-focused descriptions of diseases, along with possible treatment options.
Texas Cancer Information
This informative site aims to "gather, organize and deliver the latest information to empower Texans with the knowledge needed to reduce the impact of cancer." It's full of information on types of cancer, cancer statistics, healthcare & physician information, and more.